Palliative Care (PC) is celebrating its first year as a section in the department. Stu Farber, MD, started the UWMC Palliative Care Program in 2005, and recruitment efforts to succeed him when he stepped down as director of the program, was to bring someone to the DFM to be the first section chief of palliative care. Dr. Lu Marchand was honored to continue Stu’s legacy in this way. September 1 will be one year. So much has happened in that short year. With the strong support of administration at UWMC, the PC program has grown significantly as palliative care nationally has grown and become mainstream in our health care system.
Under the excellent leadership of Jackie Raetz, MD who served as interim PC program director until Dr. Marchand arrived last September, UWMC became the first hospital in Washington State to achieve advance palliative care certification by the Joint Commission. Cindy Angiulo, Senior Associate Administrator at UWMC, became our administrative leader for palliative care. Together with DFM teaching associates Phil Myers, ARNP, Becca Snyder, ARNP, and Meegan Wolzcyk, ARNP, the team welcomed Wendy Lendrum ARNP in January 2015. Melissa Bender, MD, director of our Chronic Care Clerkship in the medical school, and Jackie Raetz, MD continue on our service. We are a multidisciplinary team with physicians in internal medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry, and cardiology. Our UWMC service hired a social worker and its first PC chaplain Greg Malone, MDiv. Carol Kummet, MSW, continues to be a force of nature in changing culture in our hospital with her robust bereavement program, and staff education and support. Our team is strong and ready to move into our future of outpatient and inpatient palliative care, and eventually development of an inpatient unit.
We saw the transition from Tia Paganelli to Kelson Okimoto in February as PC program manager. Kelson has a wide variety of skills that we are drawing from in creating metrics that allow us to grow and evaluate our work. He is also involved in metrics development for the UW Cambia Center of Excellence and a leader in our UW Medicine PC efforts to reach Joint Commission Advance PC Certification in our entire UW Medicine system. He supervises our new student assistant Yura Kim.
In June, 2015, we were delighted to welcome Jim Fausto, MD as associate director of the UWMC PC Program, and assistant professor in family medicine. He is also the co-director of the palliative care track of the Chronic Care Clerkship for 4th year medical students at UWSOM.
Dr. Fausto earned a bachelor’s degree from Grinnell College and his M.D. from University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey – New Jersey Medical School. He completed his residency training in family medicine in the Department of Family and Social Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, followed by a Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship at Montefiore Medical Center – Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
Following fellowship, he joined the Albert Einstein College of Medicine faculty in the Department of Family and Social Medicine. He held multiple positions during his time at Montefiore Medical Center including Fellowship Director for the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship and Medical Director of the Palliative Care Service. His administrative role at UW includes clinical work, teaching, research. He is board certified in family medicine and hospice and palliative medicine. He will continue to be active in UW PC and geriatric fellowship training, resident and medical student education.
In this past year, Stu Farber, friend, colleague, incredible teacher and leader of PC at UWMC and UW Medicine, died in February. He and his wife Annalu, in partnership with the DFM and UW Advancement, established the Farber Endowed Professorship. Generous donations from supporters of the DFM and UW Medicine are making the professorship a reality. A plaque honoring Stu’s work was placed in the lobby of UWMC by Steve Zieniewicz, executive director of UWMC, prior to Steve’s transition to executive director of a New Jersey health system hospital in August. Stu envisioned the development of the UW Cambia PC Training Program for training community clinicians in PC, and its inaugural class began in March 2015 with leadership from Larry Mausch in the DFM and Ardis Doorenbos in nursing.
