The number of frail elderly patients living in nursing homes is predicted to quadruple over the next 30 years. More elderly adults are living with multiple medical conditions and co-morbidities that lead to higher number of long-term disabilities, increased use of limited health resources, and poorer quality of life toward end of life. However, palliative care approaches are underused by most health care provders. There is a national need to improve the use of palliative care by developing new health care models for clinicians, training of more palliative care clinicians, and evaluating the use of palliative care in long-term care facilities. This capstone projected explored the perceptions of palliative care among clinicians in a private practice by using a Likert-type questionnaire. The objective of this project was developed to enhance clinicians’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to provide effective palliative care to elderly patients. The methods used were educational forums which were offered to the clinicians to allow them to share their clinical expertise and experiences with terminally ill and to develop a professional self-reflection on how clinicians deal with the death of patients as well as the ethical, legal, cultural, and religious issues at the end of life. The outcome results accomplished in this capstone project were used to develop a new policy among the interdisciplinary teams of the clinic and health care facilities that servie the elderly. This capstone project explored several aspects of palliative care, including the meaning and benefits, history, and new innovations and recommendations for palliative care in the elderly recommended by the World Health Organization, the American Geriatric Society, The Institute of Medicine, Medicare and Medicaid Services, The Agency or Healthcare Research and Quality, The National Institute of Health, The Department of Health and Human Services and Health People 2020. Research for this project was obtained from the National Guidelines Clearinghouse, PubMed, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and Evidence Medicine Guidelines. Qualitative and quantitative research was obtained from different medical and nursing articles to compare the current project with national and international standards for palliative care in the elderly. The conclusion of the project was based on input obtained from healthcare providers at a medical practice. The project was proven to be successful in implementing the new policy at a medical practice where all the providers implemented palliative care as a standard of practice among the geriatric population in order to provide quality end-of-life care. The success of this capstone project hopes to implement palliative care guidelines geared towards the geriatric population that goes beyond this small medical practice and makes a difference in the medical community.
