Palliative care: An update for internists

Abstract

All clinicians should maintain basic skills in general palliative care to help address the needs of patients and families. Because keeping up with the information provided by the growing palliative care literature can be challenging, we conducted a detailed search via Medline for palliative care articles published in 2020 in top peer-reviewed medical journals. Using a consensus-driven process of selection, we reviewed and summarized 11 articles to enhance knowledge of the practice-changing palliative care literature for general internists. KEY POINTS Transitions in health status provide important opportunities for internists to engage in advance-care planning with patients and complete physician orders for lifesustaining treatment (POLST) forms to improve delivery of goal-concordant care.