The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) is the nation’s leading resource for providing health care professionals and organizations with the training, tools, and technical assistance necessary to effectively serve seriously ill patients and their families across all care settings. Part of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, CAPC has trained more than 80,000 clinicians since its founding in 1999.

Through a comprehensive, award-winning interactive online curriculum, CAPC develops training in the core skills required to improve care and quality of life for patients with serious and chronic illness and their family caregivers, including courses on pain and symptom management, best practices in dementia care/heart failure/COPD, communication skills and advance care planning, support for family caregivers, and preventing crises through whole-patient care.

“These crucial skills are often not taught in medical school,” says Diane E. Meier, MD, Director of CAPC and Professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine.

“Our goal at CAPC is to make sure that all clinicians—doctors, nurses, social workers, and others—have the knowledge and skills they need to effectively manage their patients’ symptoms, provide skilled and compassionate communication and support, and align with organizational leadership in service of best quality care for the sickest and highest-need patients," Dr. Meier says. "We also help leaders, administrators, and clinicians to establish high-quality, reliable palliative care programs for their patients at any stage of illness and in any care setting, whether they are in hospitals, nursing homes, at home, or in doctors’ offices.”

CAPC is funded through organizational membership and the support of foundations and private philanthropy. Membership is comprised of more than 1,700 health systems, hospitals, hospices, home health agencies, medical groups, health plans, community-based providers, nursing homes, and other health organizations.

Employees of member organizations have unlimited access to all CAPC tools, training, and technical assistance at no cost to the individual. Courses taken through CAPC, which are free to employees of member organizations along with free (to staff) continuing education credits for physicians, nurses, social workers, and other disciplines.

Due to the exponential increase in demand for palliative care during the COVID-19 pandemic, CAPC has expanded its curriculum to include rapid-response resources enabling clinicians to meet the needs of patients and their families, as well as responding to the needs of clinicians themselves who feel the acute stress of long shifts tending to critically ill patients.

CAPC created a COVID-19 Toolkit to give clinicians quick access to succinct information they can download on their phones on a wide range of subjects, including symptom medication dosage; managing symptoms like shortness of breath; suggested scripts for decision-making conversations with patients and their families; tools for developing or expanding telehealth services; decisions about ventilators; and how to reduce the risks of burnout and exhaustion among health care workers.

With colleagues across the country, CAPC disseminated the COVID Ready Communication Playbook, available to clinicians in more than 20 languages, to provide practical advice on how to talk about difficult topics related to COVID-19. It includes guidance on how to answer questions about testing and treatment, advance care planning, using tablet devices to facilitate and guide conversations among patients and families, communication skills for bridging inequality during the pandemic, and understanding vaccines.

Thanks to financial support from partner organizations, the COVID-19 Toolkit is available free to health care providers worldwide even if their employers are not CAPC members, in order to eliminate barriers to access.

Given the strains on health professionals over this year, CAPC has focused on providing “emotional PPE” for medical staff, many of whom are experiencing burnout, post-traumatic stress disorder, grief, and other symptoms experienced by those traumatized by working on the front lines. The toolkit includes tips on how to manage stress, virtual talking sessions facilitated by social workers, and webinars conducted by psychologists and grief counselors.

“The number of organizations and individual clinicians using these resources has risen dramatically during the pandemic, in recognition of the acute need for skilled clinician-patient communication and symptom management during the crisis,” says Brynn Bowman, CAPC Chief Strategy Officer.

“Our goal at CAPC is to make sure that all clinicians—doctors, nurses, social workers, and others—have the knowledge and skills they need to effectively manage their patients’ symptoms, provide skilled and compassionate communication and support, and align with organizational leadership in service of best quality care for the sickest and highest-need patients," Dr. Meier says. "We also help leaders, administrators, and clinicians to establish high-quality, reliable palliative care programs for their patients at any stage of illness and in any care setting, whether they are in hospitals, nursing homes, at home, or in doctors’ offices.”

CAPC is funded through organizational membership and the support of foundations and private philanthropy. Membership is comprised of more than 1,700 health systems, hospitals, hospices, home health agencies, medical groups, health plans, community-based providers, nursing homes, and other health organizations.

Employees of member organizations have unlimited access to all CAPC tools, training, and technical assistance at no cost to the individual. Courses taken through CAPC are free to employees of member organizations along with free (to staff) continuing education credits for physicians, nurses, social workers, and other disciplines.

Due to the exponential increase in demand for palliative care during the COVID-19 pandemic, CAPC has expanded its curriculum to include rapid-response resources enabling clinicians to meet the needs of patients and their families, as well as responding to the needs of clinicians themselves who feel the acute stress of long shifts tending to critically ill patients.

CAPC created a COVID-19 Toolkit to give clinicians quick access to succinct information they can download on their phones on a wide range of subjects, including symptom medication dosage; managing symptoms like shortness of breath; suggested scripts for decision-making conversations with patients and their families; tools for developing or expanding telehealth services; decisions about ventilators; and how to reduce the risks of burnout and exhaustion among health care workers.

With colleagues across the country, CAPC disseminated the COVID Ready Communication Playbook, available to clinicians in more than 20 languages, to provide practical advice on how to talk about difficult topics related to COVID-19. It includes guidance on how to answer questions about testing and treatment, advance care planning, using tablet devices to facilitate and guide conversations among patients and families, communication skills for bridging inequality during the pandemic, and understanding vaccines.

Thanks to financial support from partner organizations, the COVID-19 Toolkit is available free to health care providers worldwide even if their employers are not CAPC members, in order to eliminate barriers to access.

Given the strains on health professionals over this year, CAPC has focused on providing “emotional PPE” for medical staff, many of whom are experiencing burnout, post-traumatic stress disorder, grief, and other symptoms experienced by those traumatized by working on the front lines. The toolkit includes tips on how to manage stress, virtual talking sessions facilitated by social workers, and webinars conducted by psychologists and grief counselors.

“The number of organizations and individual clinicians using these resources has risen dramatically during the pandemic, in recognition of the acute need for skilled clinician-patient communication and symptom management during the crisis,” says Brynn Bowman, CAPC Chief Strategy Officer.

Given the strains on health professionals over this year, CAPC has focused on providing “emotional PPE” for medical staff, many of whom are experiencing burnout, post-traumatic stress disorder, grief, and other symptoms experienced by those traumatized by working on the front lines. The toolkit includes tips on how to manage stress, virtual talking sessions facilitated by social workers, and webinars conducted by psychologists and grief counselors.

“The number of organizations and individual clinicians using these resources has risen dramatically during the pandemic, in recognition of the acute need for skilled clinician-patient communication and symptom management during the crisis,” says Brynn Bowman, Chief Strategy Officer, CAPC.