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Foundation News

Five Physicians Honored for Exemplary End-of-Life Care

 

A pioneer in establishing best practices for palliative medicine and a specialist in pain management and spiritual care of cancer patients are among the five American physicians honored for improving the care of patients near the end of life. They were named recipients of the third annual Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician Awards.

The awards were given by the Cunniff-Dixon Foundation, whose mission is to enrich the doctor-patient relationship near the end of life, in partnership with The Hastings Center.

The awards were made in three categories: a senior physician category for leadership in end-of-life care, a mid-career physician category for longstanding commitment to serving patients and for leadership in palliative care, and an early-career physician category for serious commitment to the field and contribution through practical research or clinical work. The recipients, drawn from a national group of nominated candidates are, from left to right: Janet Bull, Michael Rabow, Justin N. Baker, Jason Morrow, and Theresa A. Sorano.

 

Janet Bull, MD, chief medical director and principal investigator of Four Seasons, a nonprofit hospice and palliative care organization that serves the Hendersonville and Asheville regions of western North Carolina, received the senior physician award of $25,000. She has served as principal investigator of more than 30 clinical trials to establish best practices in hospice and palliative care. She has also designed an experimental course to train palliative care physicians and provides consulting programs in hospice, palliative care, and research. In addition, she has worked closely with the Palliative Care Association of Zambia to advance policy, education, and clinician training to promote palliative care throughout that country. 

Michael Rabow, MD, Professor of Clinical Medicine, University of California‐San Francisco; Director, Symptom Management Service, UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Care Center, received the mid-career physician award of $25,000. He developed the service, which is one of the first outpatient palliative care services in a comprehensive cancer center in the U.S. It includes an interdisciplinary team of clinicians from medicine, oncology, surgery, nursing, social work, psychology, pharmacy, and chaplaincy.

Early-career awards of $15,000 each were given to three physicians:

  • Justin N. Baker, MD, FAAP, FAAHPM, director, Division of Palliative and End-of-Life Care, an attending physician, Quality of Life Service, and director of the Hematology/Oncology Fellowship Program at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, for outstanding leadership and research on palliative care for children.
  • Jason Morrow, MD, PhD, medical director, inpatient palliative care, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, for his advocacy in expanding palliative care services and his passion for educating medical students, residents, and other physicians in clinical practices and ethics.
  • Theresa A. Soriano, MD, MPH, director, Mount Sinai Visiting Doctor’s Program, Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, for her advocacy and leadership in caring for underserved patients and bringing primary and palliative care to those who are homebound. 

“We commend the winners for their exceptional skill in palliative care and their leadership in bringing this care to diverse groups of patients,” said Thomas Murray, president of The Hastings Center. “They are making a difference to these patients and their families.” 

 

Click here to view the full biographies of all Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician Awardees

 

 
2012 Nominations for the Cunniff-Dixon Hastings Center Physician Awards Now Closed

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We received an incredible field of nominees for our third annual Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician Awards.  We will be announcing the 2012 recipients in January- stay tuned! 

 The aim of the Physician Awards is to foster those skills and virtues by providing financial prizes to those physicians, young and old, who have shown their care of patients to be exemplary, a model of good medicine for other physicians, and a great benefit in advancing the centrality of end-of-life care as a basic part of the doctor-patient relationship.

There are five annual prizes totaling $95,000; one prize of $25,000 for a senior physician; one prize of $25,000 for a mid-career physician and three prizes of $15,000 for early-career physicians.

 

Click here to view the 2011 awardees and their bios
American College of Surgeons/Cunniff-Dixon Foundation, 2009 (PDF Attached)

ACS.pngSurgical Palliative Care:  A Residents Guide.

Surgeons will encounter many patients with progressive, incurable, and terminal illnesses in their role as primary physician 
or as a consultant. This manual has been written specifically for surgeons-in-training, regardless of their future sub-specialty 
career choices, to offer guidance for management of the salient problems encountered in palliative care, including advice 
on self-preparation and self-care necessary to execute these tasks competently while minimizing the risk of burn-out.

This book is a revision of Palliative Care: A Resource Guide for Physician Education,4th Edition by David E. Weissman, MD,  
Bruce Ambuel, PhD, and James Hallenbeck, MD (2007). This curriculum has been used extensively for palliative care 
education in more than 400 residency programs, including general surgery, internal medicine, family practice and neurology. 
This current version has been revised specifically to meet the needs of residents in postgraduate surgical training. The selection 
of topics was based upon the experience of the authors in designing educational programs for medical students, postgraduate 
trainees and surgeons-in-practice. The book is not meant to be a comprehensive collection of palliative care teaching resources, 
rather, to highlight the topics of greatest educational need, as identified by surgical educators and surgical trainees.

Thomas R. Russell, Executive Director of the American College of Surgeons, pointed out in an editorial that the culture of 
surgery is changing, evolving along with long held values. He notes, “No longer is it “my” patient, but it is “our” patient.” 
This shared responsibility for the surgical patient is not without peril, though this ethic has a very positive application in 
the interdisciplinary model of palliative care. Although the focus of his remarks was directed at fundamental changes in 
residency training, his comments apply equally to the norms of surgical practice, especially palliative care: “We can start 
by building a sense of mutual respect for the broad range of individuals [including the patient and his family] involved in 
the care of our surgical patients, from nurses to allied health care professionals, from anesthesiologists to environmental 
service workers. As surgeons we must improve our communication and leadership skills, so these individuals will view us 
in a more positive light.” Surgical palliative care is an approach to patient care that can help us meet this challenge.

—Geoffrey P. Dunn, MD, FACS
—David E. Weissman, MD, FACP

 

 
Download the 2009 Cunniff-Dixon Brochure (PDF)

The CDF brochure provides a brief history of the foundation, a summary of our current projects, board members and key partners, as well as information on supporting the foundation.  Feel free to download, print and share with colleagues, friends and family to help spread the word about our work.
Five Physicians Honored for Exemplary Care Near the End-of-Life

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A pioneer in establishing palliative care as a medical specialty is one of the five American physicians honored for improving the care of patients near the end of life such that maximum comfort and function are both maintained. Others include geriatricians and pediatricians. They were named recipients of the second annual Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician Awards in January 2011.

 

 The awards are given by the Cunniff-Dixon Foundation with the mission to enrich the doctor-patient relationship near the end of life. The nomination and selection process was administered by The Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life.

 The recipients were drawn from a national group of nominees. “This year’s awardees represent the very best traditions of the humanism of medicine and the best in doctoring,” said selection committee member Richard Payne, MD, Esther Colliflower Director of the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life, and a Hastings Center board member.

 “Palliative medicine was a dream years ago, when The Hastings Center began working to improve compassion and care at the end of life, but these five physicians have helped make that dream a reality,” said Thomas Murray, president of The Hastings Center. “We are pleased to help reward their leadership and dedication to this field.”

a allegre 11-05 edit.jpgAnn Allegre, MD, FACP, FAAHPM, director of medical programs at Kansas City Hospice and Palliative Care in Kansas City, Mo., received the senior physician award of $25,000, and Anthony20071108153456.jpg Nicholas Galanos, MA, MD, medical director of the Duke University Hospital Palliative Care Service in Durham, N.C., received the midcareer physician award, also of $25,000. Early career awards of $15,000 were given to Stefan J. Friedrichsdorf, MD, medical director of the Department of Pain Medicine, Palliative Care, and Integrative Medicine at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota; Savithri Nageswaran, MBBS, MPH, assistant professor of pediatrics at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center; and Eric W. Widera, MD, director of the Hospice and Palliative Care Service of San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center and an assistant professor of geriatrics at the University of California San Francisco.

 

Click here to read full bios of all the awardees.