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The overarching goal of the Duke Center for Palliative Care is to improve the care of patients with advanced serious illnesses. We rely on four complementary strategies.
First, we believe that the best ideas for improving care come from the front lines: nurses, providers, chaplains, social workers, and of course patients and families. Those are the people who have the best view of the gaps that exist in health care, and they’re the best source of novel and innovative ideas.
Second, we use techniques of design thinking to define problems and develop solutions. Based on techniques of interviewing, problem-solving, and iterative decision-making, design thinking has proven to be an extraordinarily useful tool in our work to improve serious illness communication in Duke Health and beyond.
Third, we try to break down silos, bringing clinicians, researchers, and health system leaders to the table to solve problems together. We believe that’s the best—and perhaps the only—way to ensure that proposed solutions are feasible and effective.
Finally, we think in terms of populations—what we call population-based palliative care. When we look for improvement opportunities, we always think not only about the patient, but also about all of those patients with similar needs and problems in our system. We believe that’s the only way to ensure that we’re helping all those patients who need us.
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