Follow along with this series on the Cambia Health Foundation’s blog and learn how these 12 emerging palliative care leaders, from across the interdisciplinary team, are working to advance palliative care and transform the experience of people and families facing serious illness.

Sojourns® Scholar: Dr. Joanna Paladino

• Palliative Care Physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Director of Implementation for the Serious Illness Care Program at Ariadne Labs.
• Project: Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast: A Survey to Measure Palliative and End-of-Life Care Culture

Health care organizations are working to improve care for patients with serious illness by expanding specialty palliative care services and/or implementing primary palliative care programs, including programs to improve communication about patients’ values and goals. However, the success of these initiatives at scale, when observed across multiple clinics and health systems, varies.

Why do some programs excel, and others struggle to implement at all? It appears there is an ‘elephant in the room’ impacting change efforts: ‘clinical culture.’  More specifically, the attitudes, values, and norms related to serious illness communication and palliative and end-of-life care of the health professionals directly involved. 

With the goal of examining variations in clinical culture, within and between organizations and clinical groups, 2018 Sojourns Scholar, Dr. Paladino, hopes to identify the elements of culture that support or impede the acceptance and sustainability of palliative care practices. The results collected would then be used to develop a needs assessment that could enable the proactive design of more effective implementation strategies and lead systems through lasting positive change in serious illness care.
 
“As a palliative care leader, my vision is a health care system in which every person with serious illness feels known and cared for on their own terms.”

To learn more about Dr. Paladino and her project with the Sojourns Scholarship Leadership Program, watch this video.



Meet more 2018 Sojourns Scholars:

• Charlotta Lindvall MD
• Cardinale Smith MD