Services for Physicians and Other Providers
Return Your Focus to Providing the Best Medical Care While PFY Addresses the Non-Medical Needs of Your Patients and Their Families
Improving Patient Care with Whole-Family, Non-Medical Companionship
In the complex landscape of healthcare, physicians and providers are tasked with delivering expert medical care, often within the constraints of limited time, resources, and regulations. Non-medical Serious Illness Companions and End-of-Life Doulas bridge the gap, offering the presence and in-person support that both patients and their families need but that healthcare professionals can't always provide. We can be an extra set of eyes, ears, and hands in places you and your staff cannot go.
Beyond Patient Support
We complement patient-specific medical care plans by catering more broadly to families' emotional, spiritual, and practical needs as their loved ones endure serious illness and the later stages of life.
Social Determinants of Health
By integrating non-medical support for families, you can ensure greater well-being for patients through improved social determinants of health.
The Benefits of a Serious Illness Companion
or End-of-Life Doula
Not all patients know how to interact with the healthcare system, and they may not understand the medical terminology used by their providers. This can result in the patient misunderstanding what they are told or not knowing what questions to ask. Sometimes patients are overwhelmed by their diagnosis, and the weight of their emotions makes it difficult to interact with their medical care team. They may even fear that their independence and dignity will be lost in pursuit of treatment.
Doulas and Serious Illness companions can help patients navigate the medical system and alleviate their fears.
- Many of our PFY Doulas and Serious Illness Companions have worked in the medical field, making them familiar with the systems and medical terminology. This means we are equipped to guide patients through their diagnosis and help them better interact with their providers.
- We can also act as a connection between the various providers and the patient by managing communication within the care team so everyone is on the same page regarding the patient's wants, needs, and changes to their condition.
- We provide emotional support to patients and their loved ones so they can better manage the overwhelming experience of a serious diagnosis. In the event they are too overwhelmed to communicate with their providers, a Doula can step up to assist in that communication.
- We can help patients process and understand the changes they will go through, and maintain a sense of dignity as their illness progresses.
Doulas assist patients by providing the non-medical care they need
- Managing communication with medical professionals
- Helping patients get to their appointments on time
- Helping the patient understand their diagnosis results and treatments options
- Provide emotional or spiritual support during potentially overwhelming situations
- Sitting and listening to their worries or the worries of their loved ones
- Offering support during difficult conversations, especially with loved ones
- Helping patients maintain a sense of autonomy by making sure their voice is heard and respected through this experience
- Helping patients maintain a comfortable quality of life, especially as their illness progresses
While providers know how to help from the medical side of patient care, they are limited when the patient has non-medical needs. Those non-medical needs will still have an effect on the health and comfort of the patient, but addressing those needs may fall outside the reach of medical providers. Doulas and Serious Illness companions can bridge that care gap.
- PFY Doulas and Serious Illness Companions can help cover the non-medical needs outside the reach of medical providers, which can ultimately make the care from the providers more effective by allowing them to focus on their specialty without worry that their patient’s care is falling short in other areas.
- Our Doulas will have insight into the day-to-day needs of the patient, which may influence their treatment. They can communicate this back to the providers, resulting in more well rounded care for the patient.
Streamlining the Care Process:
A Collaborative Process for Healthcare Providers
Patient Referrals —>
The process starts with a referral from your practice to PFY, often upon diagnosis of a serious illness or the realization that a patient is in final stages of life. PFY will meet with the patient and their family to determine what kind of non-medical care they may benefit from.
Non-Medical Care for the Whole Family —>
Once PFY has identified a plan of care, we will assign one or more Serious Illness Companions or End-of-Life Doulas to accompany the family. We can provide them with compassionate, non-judgmental support focused on their emotional, spiritual, and practical needs.
Feedback to Your Medical Team
PFY will track each visit in our community care platform and provide timely updates to your medical team contact. Over time, we will be able to develop data specific to your practice to justify ongoing non-medical care. We may also be able to interface directly with your EMR to ensure that all of the necessary information is in one place.
FAQs
Find answers to commonly asked questions about PFY's collaborations with physicians and other providers.
PFY was founded by medical professionals based on their experience and the realization that the medical system was about to face unprecedented challenges, which were accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, doctors have had to specialize more and more to stay at the forefront of medicine. Simply put, there are not enough professionals to undertake the scale of work that society is now demanding, and the work of these professionals now encompasses areas outside of their expertise.
As thought leaders, we could see that non-traditional support was needed to help solve these incoming public health crises. We believe strongly that healthcare professionals should be able to focus first on the type care they provide best: highly technical, patient-specific medicine. The patients themselves live in complex environments and require care beyond what medical teams can and should be required to provide. Their families need help too.
Our super power is that we are NOT medical but that we have founding roots in medicine. We understand through experience that we must not presume in the first instance that what a patient or their family needs is a medical solution. Our Serious Illness Companions and End-of-Life Doulas are trained to meet people where they are. Helping them often does not require a medical degree or a professional license, and using medical resources where they are not needed is costly and distracting. At the same time, non-medical teams need to know when to step aside and let the medical teams do what they do best.
Our Serious Illness Companions and End-of-Life Doulas all undergo an industry-standard background check. Beyond our in-house training for Serious Illness Companionship, we require that they be trained by a reputable doula education organization, which is usually the University of Vermont or the International End of Life Doula Association (INELDA). Additionally, we maintain relationships with the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) to offer palliative courses to our doulas. You may have your own screening and training requirements. We are happy to participate in all such reasonable requests.