Surgical Palliative Care: Message from the Co-Editors

On behalf of the Committee on Surgical Palliative Care, welcome to the American College of Surgeon’s Guide to Surgical Palliative Care.

The Guide is designed as a resource for practicing surgeons, surgeons-in-training, Medical Students, and anyone interested in learning more about palliative care as seen through the lens of Surgery.  As you can see from the table of contents, its subjects include topics pertaining to primary palliative care as well as those with relevance to surgeons.  Learning objectives, case scenarios, pre and post tests are contained in each module, and slide decks are available for those who want to teach these topics.

The current Guide is a revision of Surgical Palliative Care: A Resident’s Guide, a 2009 publication from the ACS and the Cunniff-Dixon Foundation.  The 2009 Guide, which was edited by Drs. Geoffrey Dunn, Robert Martensen and David Weissman, was itself a revision of Palliative Care: A Resource Guide for Physician Education, 4^th edition, (2007) which was edited by Drs. David Weissman, Bruce Ambuel and James Hallenbeck.   We are greatly indebted to the prior editors, who were instrumental in the integrating of palliative care principles into the practice of Surgery for a generation of surgeons, many of whom are now contributors to this edition of the Guide.

New and expanded topics include prognostication and assessment of palliative care needs, palliative surgery, and caring for patients at the end of life.

The home of the Guide on the ACS CSPC website allows for posting of content as it becomes available, and for seamless updating of content.

For those interested in CME, certain topics will become available on the LMS platform in the near future… stay tuned!

Timothy R. Siegel, MD, FACS
Oregon Health and Science University
Portland, OR

Emily B. Rivet, MD, MBA, FACS, FASCRS
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, VA

This guide provides guidance to assist surgeons and surgical residents in improving end-of-life care for surgical patients and to help them address difficult issues with those patients and their families.

Please monitor this page for additional updates.