Spaulding Tapped For Project to Improve End-of-Life Care

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Monica Spaulding, M.D., professor of medicine and otolaryngology at the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a specialist in oncology, is one of 30 faculty physicians selected from across the U.S. to spearhead a program aimed at improving care of the dying.

The project is sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and supported by a $985,595 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Called the VA Faculty Leaders Project for Improved Care at the End of Life, the initiative involves faculty members at 30 VA hospitals, selected from a pool of applicants, who will develop a curriculum in palliative care.

Their guidelines will be used throughout the VA health-care system to train faculty and resident physicians in internal medicine in palliative care, and will be disseminated to the health-care community at large.

Spaulding said that although the project is funded by the VA, the curriculum should touch all UB house staff, and ideally would be integrated into the Department of Medicine.

Chief of the oncology section at the Buffalo VA Medical Center, Spaulding chairs its Cancer Committee, and is a consultant in medicine at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

Spaulding lives in Orchard Park.