Olive View - UCLA Medical Center
Through a grant from the California Healthcare Foundation, Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, one of four hospitals operated by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, established an interdisciplinary palliative consultation team last year to serve its inpatient population facing advanced illness and end-of-life issues.
The team is comprised of a physician, nurse coordinator, social worker, physical therapist and chaplain. The goal of the team is to improve culturally-sensitive ‘goals of care’ discussions, triage patients to appropriate continuity venues, introduce sources of psychosocial and spiritual support to patients and their families, and educate providers on clinical protocols to ensure quality care at the end of life.
Dr. Katherine Yu, palliative provider and program director, recalls many inspiring stories of patients, but particularly that of a 45-year-old male patient with advanced liver failure who was nearing death. The team pooled its resources and was able to send the patient to his hometown to reunite with his wife and teenage daughter, whom he had not seen in a decade, just prior to his death.
“It was a unique and very satisfying moment to be able to make that happen,” Yu said. “Palliative medicine is about improving the patient’s quality of life when the curative is no longer an option. As a team, our focus always is on meeting the patient’s multiple and complex mental and physical needs, and also the needs of the family.”
Since inception, the team has provided more than 120 consultations with the greatest impact seen in expeditious symptom control and management, prompt psychosocial interventions, smooth transition of care from the hospital, and continued positive feedback from patients, families, and medical providers. The team hopes to secure additional resources in the future to expand services to the outpatient setting.
The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services fully embraces the value of palliative medicine and has incorporated similar programs at its other hospitals.
Olive View-UCLA Medical Center's Palliative Consultation Team