Contact: Will Sansom
Phone: 210-567-2579
E-mail: sansom@uthscsa.edu

Our country’s veterans are receiving compassionate care even in the midst of the most challenging medical situations, thanks to a unique geriatrics and palliative care consultation service run by physicians of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Specialists from multiple disciplines see veterans at the Audie Murphy Division of the South Texas Veterans Health Care System.

Program serves more than 100 patients a month
Sandra Sanchez-Reilly, M.D., directs the geriatrics and palliative care consultation service and palliative care program. She is an assistant professor of medicine at the Health Science Center. She said the service coordinates the care of 100-plus patients a month. Activities include pain and other symptom control, meetings with family members to clarify the goals of care, and making connections for families with hospice care if needed.

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May be only service of its kind in the United States
The geriatrics and palliative care consultation service is possibly the only one in the U.S. that combines expertise in both fields, said Dr. Sanchez-Reilly, also a member of the Health Science Center’s Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies. Three physicians are board-certified in both palliative care and geriatrics. The team is composed as well of specially trained nurses, psychologists, social workers and chaplains.

Goal to improve quality of life for patients
Palliative care is often thought of only in terms of hospice care and end of life, but this medical subspecialty also seeks to improve quality of life for individuals who are chronically ill or terminally ill. “As physicians, we can cure 20 percent of diseases out there,” Dr. Sanchez-Reilly said. “The rest we can only control. Palliative medicine is the type of medicine that seeks comfort of the terminally ill or chronically ill and their families. Appropriate palliative care helps individuals and families make decisions about what they want, and improves the patient’s quality of life by controlling pain and other symptoms such as shortness of breath or confusion. One of our goals is to enable patients to leave the hospital and return home where they are comfortable.”

Interdisciplinary training program
In addition to caring for military veterans, the palliative care program trains physician fellows within an interdisciplinary training program. It is the only fellowship in palliative care in San Antonio and South Texas. Palliative care, geriatrics and oncology fellows rotate through the palliative care consultation services, affiliated community hospices and the program’s palliative care clinic. Dr. Sanchez-Reilly noted that, among several graduates, three fellows with board certification in palliative care have gone on to care for patients in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. All are Spanish speaking and care for minority underserved populations.

More needed to enter the field
“Palliative care addresses the needs of the sickest patients, including those for whom there will not be a cure,” Dr. Sanchez-Reilly noted. “You have to have a call to this; there is no way everyone can do it. We do need more professionals to enter this field, however.”

There are very few palliative care specialists in the United States. The Health Science Center is addressing this growing need by training physician fellows to enter geriatrics and palliative care practice. Dr. Sanchez-Reilly said the San Antonio consultation service has been chosen by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) regional office to lead establishment of palliative care training programs and clinical programs in other regions of the state, including Dallas and Temple.

San Antonio is strategically positioned to care for the many Mexican-American veterans in the state’s border regions, she said.

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The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is the leading research institution in South Texas and one of the major health sciences universities in the world. With an operating budget of $536 million, the Health Science Center is the chief catalyst for the $14.3 billion biosciences and health care sector in San Antonio’s economy. The Health Science Center has had an estimated $35 billion impact on the region since inception and has expanded to six campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. More than 22,000 graduates (physicians, dentists, nurses, scientists and allied health professionals) serve in their fields, including many in Texas. Health Science Center faculty are international leaders in cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, aging, stroke prevention, kidney disease, orthopaedics, research imaging, transplant surgery, psychiatry and clinical neurosciences, pain management, genetics, nursing, allied health, dentistry and many other fields.