Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellowship

The UAB Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellowship Program has been training leaders in palliative care since 2000, making it one of the oldest and most established training programs in the country.

To date, we have trained over 60 fellows from across the country, some directly out of residency training and others mid-career. Our one-year ACGME-accredited fellowship offers a rigorous interdisciplinary education in palliative care at UAB Hospitals, the Birmingham VA Medical Center, and Children's of Alabama. 

Fellowship Experience

Fellows receive training in the outpatient setting through several outpatient clinics, telehealth, and home-based palliative care, as well as partnerships with community hospices and long-term care facilities. The balance and breadth of experience ensure that fellows are ready to practice in inpatient, ambulatory, or hospice settings upon completion of the fellowship training.

Time spent on inpatient rotations at UAB involves consults and time in the palliative care unit. On consults, you will see a wide variety of patients with goals of care and symptom management at the 5th-largest hospital in the country, with an annual consult volume of over 2,500 new patients. The 12-bed inpatient UAB Palliative and Comfort Care Unit provides training in caring for patients and families, with large rooms and hotel-like features, to help them navigate difficult times. You will learn that by focusing on the whole person, you can treat physical suffering and address emotional, social, family, and spiritual needs. This is done with the support of physicians, APPs, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, chaplains, psychologists, music therapists, massage therapists, and pet therapists.

At inpatient rotations at the VA, you will spend time on consults and working in the Safe Harbor unit. The Safe Harbor unit provides care like the palliative care unit but for the VA symptom and serves as a model for other units across the VA system. On consults, you will also attend embedded rounds with the medical ICU team to provide more holistic care to our veterans requiring ICU-level care.

Inpatient rotations at the Children’s Hospital of Alabama include consults with the pediatric palliative care providers and interdisciplinary team in Alabama’s only level 1 pediatric trauma hospital.

Fellows will spend one week each month in outpatient Palliative Care. This week, they will have one day each for a continuity clinic, House Calls, and home hospice. The remaining days with other outpatient palliative care providers and Hospice partners.

During your training, you will attend monthly individualized private counseling appointments with a licensed therapist to develop wellness practices for a career in palliative care. You will also attend quarterly half-day wellness workshops, developed by our psychologist as part of the curriculum.

Clinical Rotations

UAB is a highly walkable campus, making it easy to navigate your clinical rotations. Many of our clinical training sites are connected by skybridges, offering protection from rain, heat, and traffic. Browse these buildings to learn more about the types of training conducted there.

Explore our training sitesOpens an external link.

We offer a one-year clinical fellowship with 4 adult and 1 pediatric track positions.

Teaching Conferences

In July, you will attend a palliative care bootcamp with a group of lectures on the 10 highest-yield palliative care topics to build a solid foundation for your year in palliative care. Then, throughout the year, didactic sessions are held weekly and are paired with readings from a seminal text and key articles in palliative medicine. Fellows may attend Grand Rounds in various specialties throughout the week as per their area of interest.

Training will also include quarterly half-day communication workshops featuring VitalTalk-trained instructors and an actor to practice challenging communication in a controlled environment. Other half-day workshops include African-American community speaks training, Interprofessional Education Exchange on Death and Dying, and IPEX Ethics.

During the year, fellows learn to provide bedside teaching and monthly chalk talks on goals of care and opioid options for junior learners on palliative care rotations. There is also the opportunity to complete additional certificate-level training as a physician educator without extending the fellowship training period. In addition, all fellows.

Research Opportunities

Fellows have ample protected time to learn from one another and from faculty within our Division and across the UAB medical campus. In addition to clinical skills, the curriculum includes quarterly half-day training on conducting palliative research on topics related to quality improvement, teaching skills, and palliative care and hospice business and administration. This guides fellows through the creation of their own project as required in all ACGME training.

Program Signaling

UAB Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellowship is participating in ERAS signaling this year and will consider signals as one element of our holistic application review, including experiences, attributes, competencies, academic or scholarly metrics, letters of recommendation, and personal statement. Signaling is not required for consideration, and all applications are reviewed fully.

Frequently Asked Questions