Essential Psychiatric Skills for the Palliative Care Practitioner

Event Description

AAHPM’s Fall Advanced Clinical Course is a full-day workshop designed to use a combination of interactive case-based learning with engaging didactics to draw together practical considerations in assessment and diagnosis with evidence-based psychopharmacotherapy and psychotherapeutic techniques to enhance treatment planning and expand clinical interventions for the emotional distress associated with serious medical illness.

Course Objectives/Desired Outcomes:

• Describe differences between grief, persistent complex bereavement disorder, demoralization, adjustment disorder with depressive features, and major depressive disorder in order to choose effective treatment options.
• Employ screening strategies to estimate suicide risk and manage suicidal statements and behaviors.
• Formulate appropriate pharmacologic treatment plans for mental disorders commonly co-occurring in patients in hospice and palliative care based on current understandings of key neurotransmitters in generation and treatment of these disorders as well as best practices for agent selection and consideration for adverse effects.
• Compare and contrast the psychotherapeutic interventions in hospice and palliative care. 
• Decipher how common communication techniques in palliative care can be viewed through a psychodynamic framework.

The content is relevant to physicians, advanced practice professionals, and pharmacists with the aim to strengthen and expand the knowledge base of primary psychiatric skills for palliative practitioners from a variety of backgrounds, career stages, disciplines, and settings of care.

*PDF handouts which include the presentation slides and additional resources will be available for download to registered attendees prior to the beginning of the course.

Intraprofessional Faculty Experts:

Alex Gamble, MD, Course Director

David Buxton, MD FAPA DFAACAP FAAHPM

Allison Jordan MD CCMS FAAHPM

Christie Kahlon, PharmD MBA BCPP BCGP

Paul Riordan, MD

Conflict Disclosures:
The planners, faculty and reviewers of this educational activity disclosed no relevant financial relationship(s) with ineligible companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.

Continuing Medical Education (CME)
The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. 

The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) designates this live activity for a maximum of 7.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™.

Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Successful completion includes attesting to meaningful activity participation and completion/submission of activity evaluation within the time frame designated.

Evaluation period closes December 31, 2023, at 11:59pm CT for claiming CME/MOC credits.

Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Recognition Statement
This activity is planned in the context of one or more of the ABMS/ACGME Competencies to include Interpersonal and Communication Skills, Professionalism, Systems-Based Practice and Work in Interdisciplinary Teams. Successful completion of this CME activity, which includes participation in the evaluation component, enables the participant to earn up to:

• 7.5 MOC medical knowledge points in the American Board of Internal Medicine’s (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program.
• 7.5 American Board of Anesthesiology’s MOCA 2.0®
• 7.5 credits toward the CME of the American Board of Surgery’s Continuous Certification program.
• 7.5 MOC points in the American Board of Pediatrics' (ABP) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program.

*Additional boards to be determined pending content review.

It is the CME activity provider's responsibility to submit participant completion information to ACCME for the purpose of granting MOC credit. By submitting your CME activity evaluation, you grant AAHPM permission to submit completion information to ACCME to grant respective BOARD MOC program credit or points as applicable.

Evaluation period closes December 31, 2023, at 11:59pm CT for claiming CME/MOC credits.

Accommodations for Americans with Disabilities Act (ACT)
For any potential participant in need of accommodations related to activity accessibility, please contact info@aahpm.org or call 847-375-4712 at least one month prior to the start of the conference activity. Information on how to submit a request for accommodation will be provided upon inquiry. After the request is received, a phone call discussion will be initiated with the potential participant to determine the appropriate and necessary accommodations and resources needed.