The hospice and palliative medicine fellowship is an ACGME-accredited, fully-integrated adult and pediatric program that trains six fellows annually (three pediatric and three adult). The fellows gain broad and diverse training at six sites that include exposure in both adult and pediatric inpatient and outpatient settings, hospice residence and in-home hospice and research opportunities at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Fellows gain the knowledge and experience they need to deliver high quality care along the age and disease continuum. This includes intensive symptom management, intentional communication skills in discussion of goals of care, advance care planning, redirection of care and transition from a focus of cure to comfort.
Fellows also have opportunities for training in health care advocacy and policy and ethics training as well as professional debrief sessions with someone unaffiliated with the fellowship program. Our mission is to train our fellows to provide this care with a compassionate patient- and family-centered approach while maintaining appropriate balance in self-care, self-reflection and professional boundaries.
Learn more about UTHSC's Hospice and Palliative Medicine program and apply.
Research Interests
- Bereavement
- Pediatric palliative oncology
- Communication and medical decision making of adolescent and young adults
- Art and humanities and impact on provision of palliative care
- Communication in difficult decisions
- Social determinants of health, bioethics and palliative medicine
Program Staff: Hospice and Palliative Medicine
Program Director
Arshia Madni is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center in the Division of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. She is the Program Director of the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship and Co-Directs the Center for Bioethics and Health Equity.
On a national level, she is an active member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, particularly in the health equity space and the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. In her role at the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, she works on health equity and diversity and is a co-editor for PC-FACS. From a research perspective, her focus is on Equity and Bioethics as well as culturally inclusive care. You can find her publications in JPM, JPSM, Pediatrics, Cancer, Pediatric Blood and Cancer, as well as The Journal of Hospitalist Medicine.
In her free time, she is an avid reader and loves to take long hikes with her family. She is also an author and has published a bereavement book for children, Prayers for My Sister.
Associate Program Director
Fellowship Manager
Erica Franklin
efrank11@uthsc.edu
901.448.2852
