Making Every Minute Matter: Practical Strategies to Enhance High-Quality, Time-Efficient Hospice and Palliative Care Visits.

Abstract

Therapeutic clinical relationships and skilled communication are foundational elements of high-quality hospice and palliative care. Both require that we draw on the most valuable, yet limited, resource in our practice: clinician time. As the demand for serious illness care continues to outpace the supply of trained palliative care clinicians, we must consider time-efficiency as a key component of clinical effectiveness. Equally, many skilled interventions, including serious illness communication, can occur during time-efficient encounters, which still preserve compassion and authentic presence. This report invites clinicians to reevaluate the meaning and use of time in modern palliative care practice and offers six strategies to enhance time-efficiency in daily clinical care.