Pediatric Hospice & Palliative Care Medicine Fellowship

Mission: Provide compassionate support, education, and advocacy to improve the quality of life for families and children facing life-limiting conditions.

Vision: We envision a world in which there is seamless integration of palliative care at the time of a life-limiting diagnosis that extends throughout the patient’s and family’s journey to optimize quality of life.

Values: Collaborative, Compassionate, Resourceful

Phoenix Children's Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellowship provides a robust experience across multiple care settings. Our team completes over 500 consults per year representing a wide range of diagnoses and ages. We value our well-developed partnerships across the hospital in a variety of subspecialties including Intensive Care Units, Oncology, Cardiology, General Pediatrics, Critical Care, Neurology, and the Fetal Care Center. Our hospital-based program includes an inpatient consult service with an average daily census of over 40 patients. We have a well-developed outpatient clinic, with over 300 patient encounters per year. Our fellowship received ACGME accreditation in January 2018 and graduated our fourth fellow in July 2023.

Our fellows gain hospice experience through our partnership with Hospice of the Valley (HOV). Rotations include adult and pediatric experiences in home hospice and inpatient hospice unit settings. These occur within an interdisciplinary team with exposure to a variety of ages and diagnoses. (www.hov.org)

One unique care setting of our program is Ryan House. Ryan House is a pediatric respite, palliative, and hospice facility. During hospice months, fellows round on patients receiving acute hospice care or hospice respite care at Ryan House. Currently, there are only two other facilities like Ryan House operating in the United States. (www.ryanhouse.org)

PCH partners with the Mayo Clinic Hospital for the fellows’ adult inpatient consultation experience. (www.mayoclinic.org)

Phoenix Children’s has collaborated with the other local Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellowships to create the Phoenix Palliative Care Consortium. This consortium has developed a didactic curriculum utilizing the expertise of faculty of all five fellowships in the Phoenix metropolitan area. These didactics run weekly for the first 12 weeks of fellowship and then biweekly thereafter with a pediatric-specific didactic series led by the Phoenix Children’s faculty. This group also holds quarterly journal clubs, board reviews, and a protected case review.

Our Phoenix Children's team includes eight board-certified/board-eligible physicians, a nurse practitioner, a psychologist, a social worker, two bereavement counselors, an outpatient mental health therapist, a nurse coordinator, and research and administrative support. For more information about our team members, please see our bios on the Faculty tab.