The Comfort and Palliative Care Team is comprised of physicians, nurses, psychologists and social workers. Our goal is to relieve suffering and improve quality of life for patients and their families. Team members provide inpatient and outpatient services for families experiencing:
- Complex medical issues
- Long hospitalizations
- Life-altering diagnoses or disabilities
- Life-threatening illnesses
What is Palliative Care?
Palliative care is a medical specialty that supports the primary care team in caring for patients with life-threatening illnesses. It is a holistic approach that addresses symptom management, as well as the emotional, psychological and spiritual well-being of the patient and family.
How Our Team Helps
The Palliative Care Team offers the following services:
- Promoting communication between care teams when a family is working with more than one team.
- We arrange family conferences to discuss the family’s goals and address questions with doctors from all of the medical teams.
- Assisting with decision-making to help patients and families achieve their goals.
- We help develop a care plan based on each family’s specific needs and wishes.
- Helping the patient and family adjust to and cope with life changes related to diagnosis and treatments.
- We offer psychosocial support to all family members, including parents, siblings and extended family.
- We offer support and services even after families leave the hospital, to help make sure they have the needed community resources while at home.
- We offer psychotherapy to address common types of emotional distress, such as symptoms of depression and anxiety.
- Improving quality of life for patients and families as they continue with treatment.
- Ensuring holistic care by including ancillary services in ongoing care as needed.
- We coordinate with the following disciplines to help make sure each child and family has the services they want:
- Providing supportive services if curative treatment transitions to end-of-life care.
- We work closely with hospices in the community; if hospice care at home would best meet the family’s needs, we help make the connection to these resources.
- If the child’s treatment can no longer cure his or her illness, we help the child and family prepare for the next steps, and offer support as the goals of treatment change.
Our Team
Giovanni Cucchiaro, MD
Medical Director
Dr. Giovanni Cucchiaro is a physician with expertise in pain management (i.e. regional anesthesia) and palliative care.
Sabrina Derrington, MD
Attending Physician
Dr. Sabrina Derrington completed her training in pediatrics and pediatric critical care at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. She has a special interest in both pediatric palliative care and bioethics, and has been with the Comfort and Palliative Care Team since July 2011. Her research focuses on the way physicians develop and communicate prognosis.
Emily Edlynn, PhD
Clinical Psychologist
Dr. Emily Edlynn is a pediatric psychologist who specializes in providing psychotherapy and support to children, adolescents and families coping with serious medical illness, including issues of grief and loss. She also offers non-pharmacological interventions to help patients manage chronic and acute pain.
Jennifer Schwartz, PsyD
Clinical Psychologist
Dr. Jennifer Schwartz completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in Adolescent Medicine at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles prior to joining the Comfort and Palliative Care Team in 2011. She has more than five years of experience providing therapy and assessment in community mental health centers, university-based settings and outpatient medical clinics. She is passionate about addressing the health care needs of adolescent and transitional-age youth, creating trauma-informed systems of care, and participates in research to improve service delivery to high-risk youth.
Helene Morgan, MSW
Clinical Social Worker
Helene Morgan has extensive experience with pediatric palliative and end-of-life care in both home and hospital settings.
Susan Hunt RN, MSN, CPNP
Pediatric Nurse Practitioner
Susan worked as a pediatric nurse for 13 years prior to becoming a nurse practitioner. She joined the Pain Management and Palliative Care Team in 2010.
Jennifer Murray, CNS, PNP PC
Pediatric Nurse Practitioner and Certified Nursing Specialist
Jennifer has extensive experience in providing care for premature infants and patients with HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C. She joined the Comfort and Palliative Care Team in 2009.
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