EDITORIAL
Trainee Education in Hospice and Palliative Care
Shapir Rosenberg, M.D.
It is my honor to introduce this special
issue of the Journal devoted to the topic
of hospice and palliative care. End-of-
life care is an often underrepresented
facet of medical student and resident
education, despite intense and often on-
going clinical exposure to dying, death,
and grief processes across medical and
psychiatric specialties. Most health care
providers, including psychiatric general-
ists and specialists, may be called upon
to treat and assist patients and families
coping with serious or terminal illness.
Across a broad swath of settings, pa-
tients with end-stage renal, pulmonary,
or neurologic disease, patients with ter-
minal cancer, patients with life-limiting
sequelae from substance use disorders
or suicide attempts, families of neonates
or of children with severe genetic aber-
rations, and the bereaved all may seek
help from psychiatric providers.
As stated in my original call for sub-
missions for this theme, high-quality
care for seriously ill or dying patients
and support for their families require
skills in multiple areas of medicine and
psychiatry. Psychiatric trainees and
The American Journal of Psychiatry Residents’ Journal  |  August 2018 2
Most health care
providers…may be
called upon to treat
and assist patients
and families coping
with serious or
terminal illness.
practitioners have much to offer in this
area, including expertise in cognitive
and diagnostic assessment to distinguish
major psychiatric illness from normative
emotional processes, training in individ-
ual, family, and group psychodynamics
and behaviors, and knowledge of treat-
ments and therapies to alleviate suffer-
ing and distress most broadly defined.
Board certification in hospice and
palliative medicine is achieved by com-
pletion of a 1-year fellowship and board
examination process. Graduates of psy-
chiatry residency programs are eligible
The AJP Residents’ Journal
has launched an
Instagram page! Send
your psychiatry-inspired
photos & artwork to the
AJP-RJ Social Media Editor
Somya Abubucker
(stariyal@hotmail.com).
for consideration, along with board grad-
uates from multiple other specialties.
The excellent and diverse pieces in
this issue offer a glimpse of various set-
tings of care, ethical challenges, and
treatments encompassed by palliative
psychiatry. I am most impressed with the
writers’ commitment to both the subject
matter and the editorial process that has
led to the publication of their articles. I
thank them for their contributions.
It is my hope that this issue stimu-
lates greater awareness of the need for
enhanced trainee educational opportu-
nities in the area of palliative care and
furthers dialogue across professional
specialties regarding the unique talents
of diverse providers, including psychia-
trists, that may be of therapeutic benefit
when life-limiting illness presents.
Dr. Rosenberg is a fourth-year resident in
the Department of Psychiatry, University
of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore,
and Senior Deputy Editor of the American
Journal of Psychiatry Residents’ Journal
(2018–2019), as well as Guest Editor for
this issue on hospice and palliative care.