First, the fast pace and busy nature of any surgical service means that trainees and staff are under a lot of pressure to round as quickly and efficiently as possible and get to the operating room early in the morning. Given current trainee work-hour limitations and mandated hand-over, today’s junior staff feel this pressure all the more acutely. There simply isn’t enough time or opportunity for continuity of care. Surgical teams can’t engage palliative patients and their families in the way that dedicated palliative care teams can, and so surgical teams are often more comfortable delegating this responsibility entirely to their palliative care colleagues.
Second, there is an emotional burden to caring for palliative patients and their families. Palliation and end-of-life care imply that surgery is neither possible nor advisable any longer. It can be difficult for the surgeon to make that mental segue and assume the dual role of the psychological and medical care giver. Just as surgeons prefer that cardiologists manage their patients’ arrhythmias and nephrologists their patients’ kidney failures, they may prefer that palliative care specialists manage the emotional and medical needs of the patients on whom they can no longer operate.
Furthermore, surgical trainees have limited exposure to palliative care in the clinical setting. As the field of surgery becomes progressively more complex, palliative care training has not been at the forefront of the educational agenda. While it is taught in medical schools and in the surgical residency curriculum, there are few formalized core rotations that offer the surgical resident an insight into the clinical applications of palliative care, except for those who are particularly interested and seek such learning opportunities out in the form of an elective rotation.
The development of dedicated and multidisciplinary palliative care teams that include staff, nurse practitioners, and palliative fellows has further limited surgical resident exposure to the field. Simply put, the current medical system encourages surgical trainees to sign off on the surgical palliative patient.
This, however, isn’t good enough. Palliative care of the surgical patient needs to be a pillar of surgical training. Trainees need to be as comfortable with managing the symptoms of the dying surgical patient as they are administering fluid boluses and ordering narcotics for postoperative pain, especially late at night when there is no palliative care support.
The American College of Surgeons has responded to this challenge by developing numerous educational initiatives through its Palliative Workgroup. It has published a comprehensive surgical palliative care self-study guide specifically for residents (Surgical Palliative Care: A Residents Guide, available for free download).
There are also several regularly updated online palliative care references available either through subscription websites such as UpToDate or for free, such as the Medical College of Wisconsin’s End of Life/Palliative Education Resource Center, which offers "Fast Facts" on the management of the dying patient.
Palliative care is widely accepted today as an important clinical discipline that provides vital support to a growing proportion of the patient population. Surgical training must keep pace with this evolving reality because, at the end of the day, to be without agony and discomfort is a standard of care that every dying patient expects – not just a heroic measure that we can simply ignore.
Dr. Kayssi is a PGY IV in the general surgery program at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Easson is an ACS Fellow and assistant professor in the department of surgery and the Institute of Health, Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.