Literature Review

Soul injury in St. Augustine aims to help health workers with trauma The St. Augustine Record, St. Augustine, FL; by Lucia Viti; 8/24/26 Community Hospice & Palliative Care is bringing a specialized Soul Injury Workshop to St. Augustine, designed to help health-care workers address the emotional wounds that often accompany trauma, grief and caregiving. The workshop brings together child protection advocates, mental health providers, victim advocates, educators, domestic violence staff, social workers, first responders, nurses, nursing students and other medical professionals. [Additional access may be limited by a paywall.]Editor's Note: This community initiative exemplifies excellence for collaboration across the continuum of care. Every hospice patient, caregiver, and family arrives carrying their own history of trauma, grief, and caregiving — unhealed "soul injury," in Deborah Grassman's language of unmourned loss and unforgiven guilt. A hospice's most sacred season can reinforce those wounds through rushed, dismissive care, or begin to heal them through compassionate presence. Which door are you opening?

A retrospective mixed-methods analysis of falls among patients in a social model hospice residential care home American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine; by Carol S. Weisse, PhD, Kelly Melekis, MSW, PhD, Lam Nguyen, Cort Collier, BS, and Nadia Kelley, MPH; 8/9/26 ... In the 24-hour period prior to patients’ falls, opiates were shown to be the most frequently administered medication followed by benzodiazepines, with higher rates of falls among patients who consumed both of these medications in combination. Most falls occurred in the bedroom or bathroom and were related to toileting needs. Results suggest that informal caregivers may benefit from additional training when supporting hospice patients’ toileting needs, especially when they have received opiates and benzodiazepines. Results illustrate caregivers’ efforts to balance fall risk with patients’ desire for autonomy as a central element of home hospice care. Editor's Note: What systems do you have in place for reporting, responding to, and reducing patient falls, especially in homes? At a minimum, you need to have these in place:

Hospice of Wichita Falls hosts first Growing Through Grief Symposium KFDX Wichita Falls, TX; by Ashley Waters; 8/22/26 Hospice of Wichita Falls brought licensed professional counselors together for its first Growing Through Grief Symposium. ... "Grief as a child can really significantly impact their development growing up. So we want to try and mitigate that as much as possible and start working with them now," said Hospice of Wichita Falls Children's Program Specialist Sydney Reese. According to the National Alliance for Children's Grief, about 6 million children across the nation experience the death of a parent or sibling by the age of 18. Hospice of Wichita Falls was awarded the 2026 Grief Reach Grant to support childhood grief awareness efforts throughout Texoma [for helping professionals]. 

Clarence Braddock on the future of medical education Stanford Medicine; by Communications Staff; 8/16/26 Clarence Braddock discusses reinventing medical training: simulation, less rote memorization as AI brings info to bedside, shared decision-making, and why the process of curriculum change can matter more than the change itself. Clarence Braddock, MD, MPH, a nationally recognized medical educator and former Executive Vice Dean and Vice Dean for Education in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, joins Euan Ashley on The Future of Medicine to explore how we train future doctors, why changing long-established systems can be so difficult, and what leaders often misunderstand about creating meaningful change.

AARP is working to root out health care ageism AARP; by Megan O'Reilly; 7/27/26 ... In collaboration with the Gerontological Society of America, AARP launched a training program last year to help future health professionals recognize and stop age-based bias. Tested at 13 universities across the country with about 500 students, the program uses health care scenarios and practical tools that remind providers to listen first and treat people as individuals, not stereotypes. ... Additionally, AARP has pushed for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to allow Medicare to cover essential training for family caregivers. And we fought for a measure to assess hospitals’ commitment to improving care for older patients. We also collaborated with the Geriatric Emergency Department Collaborative to train ER personnel to recognize dementia symptoms. ...

MUSC College of Nursing expands global role in palliative care education through ELNEC partnership Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC; Press Release; 7/30/26 The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) College of Nursing (CON) has joined the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) as an official partner. This partnership strengthens national and global efforts to prepare the healthcare workforce for the growing demand for palliative care. Alongside City of Hope and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the MUSC College of Nursing reinforces a shared commitment to improving the quality of palliative care in the United States and around the world. “We are proud to join ELNEC in advancing palliative care education at a time when the need has never been greater. ...” said Catherine Durham, DNP, APRN, dean of the College of Nursing. 

Adopting the fourth pillar of acute care surgery: the current state of palliative medicine in trauma care Current Trauma Reports; by Alison Haruta and Kathleen O'Connell; 7/30/26Although most older trauma patients survive hospitalization, many deaths occur within six months after discharge, making early goals-of-care (GOC) discussions essential. However, palliative care consultation remains significantly underused, occurring in only 2–4% of severely injured trauma cases. ... Primary palliative care skills are essential for trauma surgeons, though effective integration into the trauma system has been variable. As the need grows, the specialty palliative care work force cannot keep up with demand, highlighting the need for surgeons to learn and perfect their primary palliative care skills, including communication skills and holistic symptom management. Palliative care should function as a core pillar of trauma care, ensuring dignity, reducing non-beneficial treatments, and improving end-of-life experiences for patients and families.

Hospice of Wichita Falls awarded grant for upcoming childhood grief awareness event KAUZ-6 CBS, Wichita Fall, TX; by Spencer R. Smith; 7/24/26 Hospice of Wichita Falls announced that they have been awarded a 2026 Grief Reach Grant. As part of the grant, Hospice of Wichita Falls will host Growing Through Grief: Advancing Compassionate Care for Grieving Children, a free professional symposium ... The grant was given to increase awareness of childhood grief and strengthen community support for grieving children and their families, and was funded by the New York Life Foundation and managed by the National Alliance for Children’s Grief. 

Caring with confidence: A guided approach to end-of-life careJournal of Pain & Symptom Management; Laura Maldoon, Stacy L. Nilsen; 6/26Nurses may face uncertainty when caring for dying patients due to inadequate education and experience. This uncertainty coupled with varying practices for end-of-life care may affect both care quality and nurses’ attitudes. In nurses caring for hospitalized End-of-Life patients, does having a guided End-of-Life template and care resources, compared to current practices, improve registered nurse attitudes in providing individualized end-of-life care? Two inpatient nursing units received a 30-minute End-of-Life educational intervention utilizing the City of Hope’s Comfort, Airway, Restlessness and Delirium, Emotional and Spiritual Support (CARES) toolset as a standard resource to assess and prioritize end-of-life symptom management and family communication. This project suggests improved comfort and confidence among RNs in providing end-of-life care with the use of the CARES toolset. Nurses also demonstrated increased interest in seeking additional education.

Difficult discussions: How UTC nursing faculty are using AI to teach the hardest conversations in care The University of Tennessee Chattanooga, Chattanooga, TN; by Chuck Wasserstrom; 7/20/26 Two University of Tennessee at Chattanooga College of Nursing faculty members recently shared their work on AI-assisted simulation with an international audience, leading a webinar on how the technology can help prepare graduate nurse practitioner students for difficult conversations in palliative care: Dr. Chris Doneski, director of UTC’s acute care nurse practitioner program and a simulation faculty member, and Dr. Rosebelle Peters, nursing simulation program director and senior lecturer. ... The presentation centered on a gap the two faculty members see in graduate nursing education. Doneski said students often receive training in procedures, prescribing and transition to practice, but communication training for difficult situations can be harder to build in meaningful ways. ... The recorded webinar is available through HealthySimulation.com. Users must register for a free account to view it.

New easy-to-navigate web edition: A history of care - 250 years of American need, service and hope Composing Life Out of Loss, partnered with Hospice & Palliative Care Today; by Joy S. Berger; 7/20/26 Growing out of your overwhelming response to our July 4th, 2026 commemoration, we’re now releasing a new web edition of A History of Care: 250 Years of American Need, Service and Hope to carry this work forward. We invite you to use this living history—in your own setting and across our field—as we write the next chapters of care together.

Qualitative evaluation of an Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-approved online hospice and palliative medicine fellowship program Oxford Academic | Academic Medicine - A Journal of the AAMC; by Katherine T Morrison, MD, Regina M Fink, PhD, APRN, CHPN, Kelly Arora, PhD, David Nowels, MD, Melissa C Palmer, JD, LCSW, ACHP-SW, APHSW-C, Tai Lockspeiser, MD, MHPE, Hareklia Brackett, APRN, MS, CNS, ACHPN , Darcy Campbell, AGNP-C, ACHPN, Maurice Scott, MD, Frank Amos Bailey, MD; July 2026 In 2020, the University of Colorado School of Medicine launched the Community Hospice and Palliative Medicine (CHPM) Fellowship, a part-time, innovative, online fellowship for midcareer physicians. The 3- to 4-year specialty training program, which includes completing a master of science in palliative care, was created to address the increasing need for palliative care physicians in communities with underdeveloped hospice and palliative medicine resources. This model enables fellows to remain in their communities and clinical practices while completing training leading to board certification. Guided by the Kirkpatrick Model, this program evaluation examined the fellows’ perceptions of the program’s effectiveness as a training model.