Sherwin B. Nuland Foundation For Palliative Care

The Sherwin B. Nuland Foundation for Palliative Care (SBNF) is committed to affecting the delivery of medical care of serious disease. It is the Foundation’s view that, upon diagnosis, the patient should receive, in addition to the curative therapy, support from a palliative medicine team. The field of palliative care began in this country in the early 1990s in conjunction with the hospice movement. At the present time there are a number of excellent training and research centers opened, Mt. Sinai in New York City, Massachusetts General and Dana Farber Medical Center at Harvard and University of Rochester. However, the current shortage of palliative medicine physicians is acute and growing, and the capacity of fellowship programs is insufficient to fill the shortage and the need. Therefore the Foundation plans to create a model program at Yale New Haven Medical Center for primary palliative care that will use the early intervention approach to delivering palliative care. In the past the management of symptoms has typically been offered at the more advanced stages of serious disease. The Foundation’s belief is that with early support the patient and their families can continue to experience a quality of life that is recognizable to life lived before the diagnosis. Hallmarks of comprehensive palliative care include: 1. Specialized medical care for people with serious illnesses and help for their families to improve quality of life 2. Care that is focused on relief of physical, emotional and spiritual suffering 3. Care that is appropriate for any stage of a serious illness 4. Care provided by an interdisciplinary team including nurses, doctors, social workers, nutritionists, chaplains, and other specialists 5. Care provided at home, outpatient practices, acute-care hospitals, chronic rehabilitation-care facilities, long-term care facilities, and hospice