To Future Fellows,

Welcome to the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship at the University of Kansas Medical Center! I am thrilled that you are exploring our program as the next step in your medical career. I invite you to learn more about what our program offers: collaborative interdisciplinary faculty who work in academic, community and home settings and whose passion is superb patient care and teaching our fellows to advance their communication skills and symptom management strategies.

Our Origin Story

Thanks to three HPM visionaries Drs. Ann Allegre, Christian Sinclair and Karin Porter-Williamson at the University of Kansas Medical Center and Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care, we are a well-established program that graduated our first fellow in 2005. Providing a balanced training program, our program was one of the first 32 programs to receive ACGME accreditation in 2008.

Partnering to Grow

Children’s Mercy partnered with us in 2016, allowing us to add a dedicated pediatric palliative care position and to add an outstanding pediatric palliative care experience for all our fellows. In 2023 our program partnered with the Kansas City VA Medical Center to offer a comprehensive educational experience of palliative care in the inpatient and outpatient settings along with inpatient hospice.

Generous funding from our partners Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care, The University of Kansas Health System, Kansas City VA Medical Center and Children’s Mercy Hospital & Clinics allows our program to accept four fellows per year. We accept fellows with a variety of residency backgrounds, including individuals who begin their fellowship directly after the completion of residency and mid-career physicians desiring a career change. We believe having a class of fellows allows much-welcomed peer mentorship while you develop your HPM competencies.

Program Culture

Program strengths are our people, a commitment to expose learners to different models of hospice and palliative medicine, and a desire to ensure program development and mindfulness and wellness foundations are a grounded focus throughout the fellowship year.

We humbly serve a broad Midwest patient population that brings a full spectrum of medical issues to our doors. Our clinical sites have a wide variety of referring providers. For example, the KU inpatient palliative care teams routinely receive consults from our medical, surgical, neurosurgical, burn and transplant ICUs as well as oncology, cardiology, neurology and hospitalist services. With inpatient, outpatient and home settings in our fellowship, fellows truly care for patients along the continuum of care: from the ICU room to the living room and from initial diagnosis to the active dying process.

In addition to the clinical bedside training, fellows come together to receive didactic training every Thursday morning through lectures, journal club, board prep sessions, ethics conferences, communication and simulation labs and mindfulness sessions. Fellows receive mentoring on teaching skills and scholarly projects throughout the year. These experiences combine to create a well-rounded education that prepares fellows for a breadth of future career paths within the field.

Finally, Dr Hansen (Associate Program Director) and I simply love what we do — we cheer each other’s and each fellow’s successes. We strive to create an environment of belonging for all our team members. It is our goal for fellows to feel empowered to show up as their authentic selves.

While fellowship is only a single year, training at KUMC means forever joining a successful, supportive network of established HPM alumni across the country.

Lori Olson, M.D.
Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellowship Program Director