Palliative Care Service

» Massachusetts Health Care Proxy

Serving communities throughout Greater Boston, the Newton-Wellesley Hospital Palliative Care Service provides consultations for acute pain management and palliative care for hospitalized patients. 

Palliative Care

Palliative Care is specialized medical care for people with serious, life-limiting conditions. The goal of palliative care is to prevent and relieve suffering, improve the patient’s quality of life, and to provide the best care possible to patients and their families while faced with a serious illness.

The Palliative Care Team is multidisciplinary and includes the specialized skills of physicians, nurse practitioners, a social worker and a chaplain who all work together with the patient’s other health care providers to offer an extra layer of support, while focusing on:

Symptoms: Patients with serious illness often have debilitating symptoms such as pain, nausea, shortness of breath, anxiety, constipation, depression, and/or fatigue. Our team has expert knowledge to assist with managing these and other symptoms. In addition to physical symptoms, we care for the patient as a whole person, and explore emotional, social and spiritual needs as we understand how these factors can significantly impact a patient and family facing serious illness.

Enhanced Communication: Our team will partner with patients, families, and other doctors/health care providers in the hospital to help with communication, so that we can align treatment options with a patient’s goals. We spend the time needed to ensure a patient and family understand their illness and options, so that a truly informed decision can be made about the direction a patient’s care should take.

Improved Transitions of Care: Our team works very closely with the Care Coordination team to help patients find the right services after discharge that are consistent with their goals, creating a seamless continuum of care across a range of clinical settings.

Palliative care can be used when a patient is receiving treatment for a disease, as well as during the time when there are no longer curative treatment options.

Inpatient Palliative Care Consults

When a palliative care consult is requested for a patient in the hospital, the specialist physician or nurse practitioner conducts a detailed review of the patient’s medical record, and speaks with other physicians and caregivers involved in the patient’s current care. Team members will then meet with the patient and/or family to discuss and review a variety of topics including symptoms, knowledge of disease process, quality of life, treatment options, and goals of the patient and/or family. We then communicate our findings back to the referring physician and other involved clinical specialists

Outpatient Palliative Care Consults

The Outpatient Palliative Care Team provides consultation on seriously ill patients with cancer seen in the Mass General Cancer Center. We help manage symptoms related to disease and cancer treatment such as pain, nausea, shortness of breath, fatigue, anxiety, constipation and depression. In addition to aggressive symptom management, we work with patients, families, and VCC providers to address coping with illness and advance care planning. Our goal is to help patients with cancer and their families live as fully as possible while undergoing cancer care. A referral to be seen by Outpatient Palliative Care can be made by the patient’s oncologist at the VCC. 

Educating the Newton-Wellesley Community

In addition to consultations, the members of the Palliative Care Service are actively involved in providing education to the Newton-Wellesley community, including physicians, nurses, case managers, social workers, house officers and medical students through regularly scheduled conferences and rotations with our team. Our members also sit on various hospital committees to ensure that hospital policies appropriately reflect the needs of our seriously ill patients. 

Team Members

Kosha Thakore, MD, Director (profile)
Julia Ragland, MD, Director of Palliative Care Education (profile)
Margaret Seaver, MD, MPH, Director of Outpatient Palliative Care (profile)
Cheryl Marks, MS, RN-BC, FNP-BC 
Lisa Catalano, LICSW, Social Worker
Valerie McClay, Administrative Assistant

Contact Us

Phone: 617-243-6573 Fax: 617-243-6070