Sunset Sillouette: Courtesy of the New Mexico Tourism Dept. and Mark Nohl

“A hope of returning to nursing in this field was countered by the surgeon Norman Barrett who said ‘Go and read medicine. It’s the doctors who desert the dying and there’s so much to be learned about pain. If you don’t do it properly you’ll only be frustrated, and they won’t listen to you’.”

Dame Cicely Saunders, Founder of the Hospice movement who trained after being a WWII British Army Nurse


Rehabilitation / Palliative Care & Hospice

Fellows rotate through the Albuquerque VA’s rehabilitation ward which also encompasses palliative care and hospice patients.

Annual Medicare expenditures for hospital-based rehabilitation reached close to 6 billion in 2004. Fellows evaluate and treat delirium, dementia, agitation, anxiety, apathy adjustment disorder, mania, psychosis, impulsivity, insomnia, and depression all of which can impede “participation in therapy, length of stay, discharge dispositions, resultant functional outcome and ultimately quality of life .” Fellows participate in treatment team meetings, family meetings, and work with physical, occupational and speech therapists.

In addition, Fellows have an opportunity to follow inpatient palliative care and hospice patients. Assisting with end of life care for both the patient and their families. Fellows can learn pain and symptom management, and therapeutic techniques.

Faculty includes Susan Miller M.D., Janice Knoefel M.D., Carla Eide M.D., and VA Chaplains.