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Endowed Chair in Palliative Care
Brings Solace to Terminally Ill Patients
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Alan Kates
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Given the choice, most would opt to spend their last days at home—in the care of loved ones. But many terminally ill patients face a very different reality. More than 50 percent of Americans die in hospitals; as many as half spend some time in an intensive care unit in the year before their deaths.
With so many patients living out their final days in an institutional setting, the need for hospitals to provide the comforts of home and relief from suffering and pain has never been greater. UCSF's Palliative Care Service aims to do just that.
Established in 1999, the Service focuses on bringing physical, emotional, and spiritual solace to patients at the end of their lives through:
- A consultation program for terminally ill patients, their families, and physicians treating those patients; and
- Special rooms for patients, called Comfort Care Suites, featuring music, beautiful views, and enough room for family and friends to gather.
"We are a service of hope," says Steven Pantilat, MD, associate professor of medicine at UCSF and director of the Palliative Care Service at the UCSF Medical Center. "Some may wonder how we can speak of hope in reference to people who are really, really sick. But there is hope. There's hope for dignity and comfort during one's last days."
The Service has recently received a generous gift from Alan Kates. This gift has established the Alan M. Kates and John M. Burnard Endowed Chair in Palliative Care, with Pantilat as chair holder. A deferred gift, in the form of a planned bequest from John Burnard, will provide additional support for palliative care at UCSF.
Burnard, whose interest in palliative care goes back more than a decade, observed firsthand the challenges of caring for terminally ill patients when he volunteered at a Northern California hospital.
"A lot of emphasis is placed on keeping people alive, yet people at the end of their lives benefit not only from medical attention, but from emotional and spiritual forms of care," Burnard explains.
Kates, president of Pacific Concessions—a Bay Area-based company specializing in theater financing and concessions—is a longtime supporter of medical research at UCSF. Conversations with Burnard, a close friend, piqued Kates's interest in palliative care.
"Traditional medicine does not always touch on the less quantifiable aspects of end-of-life-care," Kates believes. "Palliative care addresses not just a patient's illness, but the person as a whole. It requires a special type of skill, and John and I believe that Dr. Pantilat has that expertise."
To learn more about the Palliative Care Service at UCSF, contact Helen Dannelly at 415/502-6293 or hdannelly@support.ucsf.edu.
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