Thank you for your continued engagement as we continue to invest in a strong palliative care program. We are delighted to share that Dr. Yuko Iwanaga joined us at the end of February.
She completed her palliative care fellowship in 2019 at OhioHealth and is happy to be back in Oregon close to her family. We have continued our recruitment efforts to bring more physicians on board as she is our only full-time provider.
Our census remains high and while we recruit palliative care providers, our capacity at this point means we must continue scoping our services to patients on 5N with a main diagnosis of advanced cancer, NTCU, ICU/CVCU and/or have a TRACS attending provider.
We hear from medical staff often the need for more palliative support and appreciate your patience. In the interim we will continue to staff more social worker support to work directly with attending physicians and are adding an RN to our multidisciplinary team. The RN role will help extend our physicians in symptom management and follow ups.
We also continue to provide membership for CAPC (Center for Advancing Palliative Care) which has robust education materials including free CME. See previous Common Ground article with instructions and tip sheet for signing up.
Questions? Contact Dr. Christine Clarke and/or Larissa Smith.