) Hospice and palliative care are neglected areas in health professional training. Hospice, now recognized as an important and effective means of achieving palliative care and improving the quality of life for terminally ill patients, has developed largely outside of mainline, established medical treatment and educational centers. The terminal phase of illness is an area of care that many health professionals, and physicians in particular, have shunned. This is compounded by the fact that there are few formally structured training programs in palliative care available to medical students and physicians in the United States. In response to this RFA, the University of Maryland Cancer Center (UMCC), the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM-SOM), the University of Maryland Medical Systems (UMMS-represents the University of Maryland Hospital), the Joseph Richey Hospice, Stella Maris Hospice and the Bay Area Home Hospice have collaborated to implement a comprehensive training program in hospice and palliative care targeted at the education of medical students and physicians, and at fully integrating the hospice approach to palliative care within the University of Maryland academic treatment and educational center.To accomplish this, we have formulated the following specific aims: 1)To implement a valid, structured and multidisciplinary educational program in palliative care at the UMCC, UM-SOM and UMMS that is designed to produce medical students and physicians competent to provide such care.This program will be crafted with considerable regard to the educational objectives for enhancing physician competence in the care of dying patients as outlined by the American Board of Internal Medicine; 2) To utilize the above educational program to fully integrate state-of-the-art hospice and palliative care practices within the academic medical teaching facilities of the UM-SOM, UMCC and UMMS. The educational programs proposed will directly impact on all medical students at the UM-SOM, all residents in internal medicine and family medicine training at the UMMS, all Hematology-Oncology fellows in training, and all clinical faculty members of the UMCC hematology and medical oncology division, as well as many clinical faculty members of the Departments of Medicine, Family Medicine and Pediatrics of the UM-SOM.
