Welcome to the first of a six-part series focused on the integration of palliative care into the practice of surgery. Dr. Geoffrey Dunn defines Surgical Palliative Care as “the treatment of suffering and the promotion of quality of life for seriously ill or terminally ill patients under surgical care.” He has proposed that the Family Meeting is like a surgical procedure in which we “Prepare, Do and Close.” Using the case of a geriatric trauma patient in multi-system organ failure, in this episode we discuss how to run a family meeting, how to discuss code status and how to discuss goals of care.
Family Meeting:
Fast Fact #16: Moderating the Family Meeting
Fast Fact #222: The Family Meeting Part 1- Preparing
Fast Fact #223: The Family Meeting Part 2- Starting the Conversation
Fast Fact #227: The Family Meeting Part 6- Goal Setting and Future Planning
In-hospital CPR:
CPR in adults in the hospital: a report of 14720 cardiac arrests from the National Registry of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation
Development and validation of the good outcome following attempted resuscitation (GO-FAR) score to predict neurologically intact survival after in-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation
Dr. Red Hoffman (@redmdnd) is an acute care surgeon and associate hospice medical director in Asheville, North Carolina, host of the Surgical Palliative Care Podcast (@surgpallcare) and co-founder of the recently launched Surgical Palliative Care Society (
www.spcsociety.org).
Dr. Fabian Johnston (@fabianjohnston) is Associate Professor of Surgery and Oncology and Chief, Division of GI Surgical Oncology at Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Amanda Stastny (@manda_plez) is a PGY-2 in the General Surgery program at Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC) in Asheville, NC.
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