Palliative Care Fellows

What inspired you to pursue a fellowship in Hospice and Palliative Care?
In my initial days as a med student rotating through stroke neurology on my first clinical rotation, I learned that palliative care is very important to providing good neurologic care, and this continued to be reinforced through my training. My residency PD encouraged me to attend INPCS in 2023, and soon thereafter I decided I wanted to pursue formal training and make this intersection a core part of my clinical practice and education endeavors.

Why did you choose Rochester, NY, as the destination for your fellowship?
Meeting you all during the interview and others including former fellows at INPCS, I felt like I would be very supported. The neuro specific mentorship was also a big draw.

What specific aspects of Hospice and Palliative care are you most passionate about? Are there any particular professional interests or areas of focus you hope to explore during your time with us?

• Neuropalliative care, naturally :)
• Explore hospice & palliative care as applied to people of various cultural and socioeconomic contexts
• Hope to explore teaching palliative + neuropalliative skills after (or alongside) building my own skills

Looking ahead, where do you envision yourself practicing after completing your fellowship?
I envision practicing in an academic setting where I can focus on clinical practice involving a combination of inpatient neurology/stroke & palliative care and outpatient neuropalliative care, teach and mentor trainees (especially residents), and work on research passion projects as time allows. I think it would be cool to take my skills to a place where there is little to no neuropalliative expertise.

What do you hope to learn and accomplish during your fellowship with us? Are there any specific skills, experiences, or goals you have in mind?

• Improve approach, flow, and skill in leading goals of care conversations & family meetings, and handling emotions (of all parties involved), particularly in time-sensitive situations
• Improve approach to helping navigate goals and decisions in the setting of multiple challenging comorbidities. I had very limited direct heme/onc exposure in residency (only ~10 nights intern year) & med school and haven't rotated through cardiology since med school, and those are two of the services on which I saw a high volume of strokes in my neurology training. It sometimes felt uncomfortable to ask patients & families about stroke-specific decisions without feeling like I had a good grasp of the prognosis and impact of their other conditions.
• Build skills in managing various symptoms and really thinking through it, not just picking things to try out of what feels like a limited/anecdotal-experience-based toolbox coming in
• Help answer question #4

Outside of your professional pursuits, we believe in the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. What are some of your hobbies and interests outside of medicine?
My lil ol dog Piper, hiking, dance, trying food from a variety of cuisines, Hindi & Telugu songs & movies (let me know if interested in a movie night!)

Anything else that you would like to share?
I'm also interested in spending some elective time with AHF palliative consults and Rezenity.

What inspired you to pursue a fellowship in Hospice and Palliative Care?
Hospice and Palliative Care offers the opportunity to listen to and honor people’s stories, allowing you to focus on what I think are the two most important questions: (1) “Who are you?” and (2) “What is important to you?”. HPM allows you to accompany people in moments they often had not imagined for their life’s story. Medicine can have a lot of literal and figurative noise, and HPM offers the opportunity to sit and reflect with people on what truly matters most to them at their core as a human being and work to honor that as best as you can.

Why did you choose Rochester, NY, as the destination for your fellowship?
I loved my interview day, especially seeing Rachel and Paul banter— I felt like I found my people. I could feel the community, humanity, and care of the program throughout the day. I am also passionate about the humanities, and Rochester’s department of humanities and true commitment to the humanities was very important to me.  

What specific aspects of Hospice and Palliative care are you most passionate about? Are there any particular professional interests or areas of focus you hope to explore during your time with us?
I am passionate about bereavement care and incorporating the narrative arts to honor people’s stories. I also like to find the glimmers, believing beauty, joy, and humor can co-exist with sadness, grief, and tragedy if you look hard enough, never underestimating the power of the ordinary, particularly when done with great love. I hope to learn more about palliative care and bereavement care for families in the adult population, gain more knowledge of ethical principles/practices, and learn how we can make magical moments for adults like we do on the Peds side. 

Looking ahead, where do you envision yourself practicing after completing your fellowship?
I see myself doing inpatient pediatric palliative care and am open to inpatient adult palliative care. I envision practicing pediatric hematology/oncology in the inpatient setting and/or as a resource doctor in clinic. I do not consider myself a physician-researcher (rather a “physician-artist”), but I would like to continue doing work exploring how to augment the voices and stories of those in the shadows and living at the edges, currently focused on bereaved parents and AYA with Sickle Cell.

What do you hope to learn and accomplish during your fellowship with us? Are there any specific skills, experiences, or goals you have in mind?
I hope to learn more communication and listening skills so as to be a faithful curator and narrator of people’s stories in a way aligns with their beliefs, values, and passions. I also hope to gain comfort in adult palliative care and navigating family dynamics of adults as I have cared for children and their parents rather than parents and their children.

Outside of your professional pursuits, we believe in the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. What are some of your hobbies and interests outside of medicine?
I took up Pilates in fellowship and may also take up yoga to stretch my elder millennial joints. I enjoy baking, trying new restaurants, watching TV (especially shows based on books I never read and likely meant for teens), Notre Dame football, getting too many snacks (and too little meal prep) at Trader Joe's, and spending time with my family. It’s been ages, but I enjoyed painting portraits and drawing and hope some day to start back up.

Anything else that you would like to share?
My favorite poem for the hard days is Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese.”

What inspired you to pursue a fellowship in Hospice and Palliative Care?
I was greatly appreciative of the hospice team as we took care of my grandmother during my final years in high school. The team treated her and especially my mom so compassionately -- they set an excellent example for the type of provider I aim to be. As I continued in child neurology, it became more clear to me that palliative care aligned with my own goals and would allow me to take more holistic care of my child neurology patients, as well as to be able to participate in the care of children with different medical complexities as well. There is so much crossover in the child neurology world that palliative care seemed like a natural next step for me, and I'm excited to see the field of pediatric neuropalliative care grow! I really enjoy being able to wear different hats and do different things, so this was a great way to gain more expertise in taking care of whole families as well as have days that will be variable and see lots of different types of medicine.

Why did you choose Rochester, NY, as the destination for your fellowship?
The people in Rochester across the board have been so friendly and welcoming - definitely the type of community I grow best in! I first found a wonderful neurology family here in Rochester when I started child neurology residency. I enjoyed nearly everyone I had the chance to meet both in and out of my department, so when it came time to choose where to continue training, it was naturally top of my list. I also found my own little family here in Rochester, as I met my now fiancé (almost husband!) shortly after moving here and have grown to call the area home.

What specific aspects of Hospice and Palliative care are you most passionate about? Are there any particular professional interests or areas of focus you hope to explore during your time with us?
I really enjoy the patient/provider relationship and get a lot of meaning out of improving the communication between patients, their families, and their medical teams. Giving bad news is another topic I find incredibly important and I hope to be able to continue honing that skill to be able to teach and pass this along someday. Advanced communication training is an interest to me, as is Vital Talk (which I would love to get certified in!). I am definitely interested in the crossover between palliative care and child neurology and am enthusiastic to participate as the field grows!

Looking ahead, where do you envision yourself practicing after completing your fellowship?
I would be delighted to stay in the Rochester area after completing fellowship, hopefully to practice a combination of pediatric neurology, pediatric palliative care, and pediatric neuropalliative care. I could see myself doing a lot of inpatient time in those spaces, but I am interested in growing the outpatient side of palliative and neuropalliative care as well. I wonder (long long ways from now) if maybe later in my career I may like to dive more into pediatric hospice - I was so impressed by Ryan House, the combined hospice/respite care home in Phoenix that I saw when I went to INPCS. I wish we had something like that in Rochester!

What do you hope to learn and accomplish during your fellowship with us? Are there any specific skills, experiences, or goals you have in mind?
I would love to get Vital Talk certified! Getting exposure to Botox in the PM&R space would also be of interest to me, as I think doing spasticity Botox is a nice fit for neuropalliative care and something I would like to do in practice. I also hope to get more comfortable this year with pain management, as I haven't had many opportunities to manage opiates in the past. I think for my academic project I want to do a needs assessment of the current pediatric neurology faculty to see if I can identify any specific spaces and places pediatric neuropalliative care can grow here.

Outside of your professional pursuits, we believe in the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. What are some of your hobbies and interests outside of medicine?
I LOVE to bake! Trying new recipes is very relaxing to me. I also greatly enjoy reading and often have a few books to read at a time. I also greatly enjoy going to punk rock concerts, walking the beach up at Lake Ontario, and spending time with my fiancé and friends, mostly eating new places! I rarely (if ever) say no to ice cream.

Anything else that you would like to share?
I'm really excited to be here—I am looking forward to a great year!

What inspired you to pursue a fellowship in Hospice and Palliative Care?
I was first introduced to concepts of palliative care in an undergraduate class called "Death and Dying", which immediately captured my attention as an overly existential student with interests in medicine. I loved that palliative care offered the space to grapple with the inevitabilities of mortality despite advancements in modern medicine. This interest was reinforced through medical school and residency, where I saw how the field really puts you face to face with the full spectrum of human experience.

Why did you choose Rochester, NY, as the destination for your fellowship?
I was lucky to have completed my internal medicine residency at URMC and got to know how wonderful the palliative department is during that time. There is such a diverse range of interests and expertise amongst faculty here, and getting to train at an institution/city with such a historical palliative care legacy is an incredible opportunity.

What specific aspects of Hospice and Palliative care are you most passionate about? Are there any particular professional interests or areas of focus you hope to explore during your time with us?
I'm interested in exploring health inequities across the spectrum of palliative care/hospice and continuing working on community-based engagement within the Rochester community. Also excited to be a part of the first fellowship class to witness the roll out of the MAID program in New York this year.

Looking ahead, where do you envision yourself practicing after completing your fellowship?
I see myself continuing to practice some combination of Hospital Medicine and Palliative Care in the Rochester area after completing fellowship!

What do you hope to learn and accomplish during your fellowship with us? Are there any specific skills, experiences, or goals you have in mind?
I hope to become a more thoughtful physician and communicator, and to build the judgment to navigate the complex ethical dilemmas this field inevitably brings.

Outside of your professional pursuits, we believe in the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. What are some of your hobbies and interests outside of medicine?
I love traveling, spending time with my family, friends and husband, who is a neurosurgery resident at UofR, group fitness classes, biking along the canal on a summer day, trying new foods, interior decorating, photography and making art!