The current COVID-19 pandemic presents health care providers and leadership with heretofore unplanned demands to care for a tsunami of critically ill patients. They must contain contagion with limited supplies of vital medical equipment and facilities such as ventilators, ICU rooms, and even basic levels of personal protective equipment. Physicians, physician assistants, nurses, social workers, psychologists and chaplains care for critically ill patients across the continuum and assume roles they are not trained for, often with unclear responsibilities. They do not know how many patients they will have to serve or how to deliver care remotely using new technologies while adapting rapidly to new protocols, policies, and lines of command. Providers will struggle with managing distressing symptoms in dying patients such as pain, air hunger, and delirium in the absence of best practice guidelines or decisional supports in their medical records or institutional protocols for management of these symptoms. They communicate with patients and families hastily forced to make end-of-life decisions influenced by resource allocation. These may be decisions not aligned with the values or choices of patients and their families, placing them in direct conflict with their own values and experience. Additionally, telehealth patient visits and teleconferences have replaced face-to-face communication with patients and colleagues to limit the spread of this highly contagious disease. All the while, healthcare leaders will be face challenges maintaining morale and well-being while providers fear for their own health and infecting their families.
 
The Coleman Palliative Medicine Training Program is offering this series of on-demand webinars to improve the competence and performance of healthcare professionals as these work to provide the highest level of care during these unprecedented times.