Beginning a palliative care program: Start small and build

When developing a palliative care program, guidance from experts who have developed palliative care programs can be of great value. If you do not have experts you can get guidance from, consider some of these key elements that we have been able to apply when we developed palliative care in Saudi Arabia at Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare. What’s the compelling reason to develop palliative care at your institution? Make sure you have strong support from leadership. Create a multidisciplinary team with team leaders who are established and respected. You can start small and build but recognize how you want to grow your program. As your program develops further, more opportunities for growth will occur with relationships built with teams that you collaborate with. Gather data (quantitative/qualitative) that will inform you of how your program is doing, provide educational instruction to providers and ancillary staff and look for potential opportunities to grow that is feasible for your program.