Athena Forum Unveils Course On End Of Life And Palliative Care

Online, June 7, 2012 (Newswire.com) - Athena Forum, LLC, is offering a new online course this spring on one of the most challenging issues that health care professionals face: end of life and palliative care.

The course is designed to help case managers, nurses, and social workers receive the information they need for any patient requiring hospice care, says James McGregor, MD, a medical director at Sutter Care at Home in Sacramento. An expert in end of life (EOL) and palliative care, McGregor is the course director for Athena Forum's new course, "EOL and Palliative Care."

"This course is for anyone caring for patients with a life-limiting illness, regardless of where the patient is in the progression of his or her disease," McGregor says. "Nurses, case managers, and social workers need to know what hospice is and what the hospice benefit is for each patient. This course gives them that information.

"In addition, providers need to know how to a manage patients' symptoms, and that requires having a thorough understanding of pain management," he adds. "Often, when patients' pain and symptoms aren't managed adequately, their discharge from the hospital could be delayed, which can be costly because it prolongs length of stay needlessly."

Since the course opened for enrollment this spring, at least one hospital has started using it as a blueprint to improve its hospice program, said Tom Rasmussen, the CEO and publisher of Athena Forum. In a survey of nurse case managers and social workers who have taken the course so far, most rate it as "excellent and pertinent to my job.

"Too often today, families and care givers do not have the important conversations with patients about what they would want with respect to treatment and life options when these patients are facing a life-limiting illness," McGregor says. "Either those conversations don't happen or they are not quality conversations.

"If a 90-year-old patient goes into a hospital, the hospital staff may ask family members, 'If your mother's heart stops, do you want to start it again?' Of course you say, 'yes,' why wouldn't you? But that shouldn't be the end of the conversation," he adds. "If the patient has one or more chronic conditions, then the nurses or case managers would be advised to have a more detailed conversation.

"Case managers should explain that restarting a patient's heart may not always be successful particularly if the patient is old, frail, and in ill health," McGregor explains. "What are the chances that the patient will be as good as she was upon admission? Care givers and family members need to have these conversations so that everyone can make informed decisions about what the patient wants.

"Also, it's important to understand that sometimes the best setting for some patients is hospice care," he adds. "Stage four lung cancer patients, for example, have much better symptom control and live longer in hospice than when they go back to the hospital for chemotherapy. If the nurses and case managers don't know this about these patients, how can they offer the most appropriate treatment options?

"Our health care system needlessly spends an inordinate amount of money on patients in the last six to 12 months of life by keeping patients in intensive care, for example," he comments. "The ICU is fine for many people, but not for all. Taking heroic measures for a young person may be appropriate but won't necessarily work for an older person. In fact, it's better if some older patients stay at home instead of going into the ICU over and over again. At home, they get better care and it's what patients and family members prefer.

"Nurses, case managers, and other care givers who take this course will understand how to provide the right care for the right person in the right setting," McGregor concludes. "That's important for patient care, obviously, but it's also important because it can improve patient and family satisfaction scores . After taking this course, nurses, social workers, and case managers will deliver better care and be more likely to provide the care patients want."

About Athena Forum

Athena Forum is a 4,000-page online course curriculum awarding 400 continuing education credits for nurses, social workers, and case managers. A management tool for high performance, Athena Forum is a staff development program for these providers and its database is searchable as a reference tool. All courses are managed by nationally recognized experts.

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