Improving health care for people living with serious illness

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has released a new, comprehensive guide designed to help older adults assess all aspects of their health: My Health Checklist. The free checklist supports important tasks like tracking medications while also guiding individuals to reflect on what’s going well with their health and well-being, identify areas for improvement, and articulate questions or concerns they can share with their care teams. 

In case you missed it, registration is open for the McGill International Palliative Care Congress on October 15-18, 2024 in Montreal, Canada. The conference is a great place for interdisciplinary collaboration and learning among palliative care clinicians, scientists, and advocates.

Our June session of the Serious Illness Care Education Forum featured Dr. Tamara Vesel from Tufts University School of Medicine. She led a great discussion about An Innovative Workshop to Teach Primary Palliative Care Communication Skills to Fourth-Year Students at Tufts University School of Medicine. One particularly interesting approach of the workshop was using professionally trained actors as faculty in the course to teach students about non-verbal communication skills. Now required coursework for all fourth-years, the medical students responded very positively to the workshop and reported using many of the skills they had learned in subsequent clinical rotations.