Background-In preparation for development of a palliative care intervention for patients with heart failure (HF) and their caregivers, we aimed to characterize the HF population receiving palliative care consultations (PCCs).

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A required palliative care experiential rotation flanked by OSCEs at our institution improved the acquisition of primary palliative care communication skills similarly to other nonclinical educational platforms, but may better meet the needs of the resident and faculty as well as address all required ACGME milestones.

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Background: Little is known regarding the fidelity of delivery of guideline-recommended components of palliative care in “real world” encounters. Objective: To develop a qualitative coding framework to identify components of clinical palliative care in clinical documentation across care settings. Design: Retrospective review of palliative care clinical documentation from medical providers, with directed qualitative content analysis to identify components of clinical care documented. Setting/Subjects: Purposively sampled deceased patients seen by palliative care at a US academic medical center between 7/1/2011–7/1/2018. Main Outcomes and Measures: The outcome of this work is a coding framework for use in future research. We assessed the robustness of the framework using Cohen’s kappa. Results: We reviewed sixty-two encounters from twenty-six patients. We identified 7 major themes in documentation: (1) addressing physical symptoms, (2) addressing psychological symptoms, (3) establishing illness understanding, (4) supporting decision making, (5) end-of-life planning, (6) understanding psychosocial context, and (7) care coordination. Interrater reliability varied widely between components, with Cohen’s kappa ranging from −.51 to 1. Conclusions: This pilot study provides a coding framework to measure documentation of clinical palliative care components. Several components could not be reliably identified using this framework, suggesting the need for additional measurement strategies.