Leadership and Administration in Hospice and Palliative Care

Degree Offered

Postbaccalaureate Certificate

Program Description

Leadership and Administration in Hospice and Palliative Care is a 12-credit, online postbaccalaureate graduate certificate program designed to provide learners with experiences designed to foster a deeper knowledge and understanding of the numerous administrative issues in caring for patients with a serious illness. Specifically, participants learn about assessing the need for a hospice program or palliative care program, and how to develop each program. Leadership and administrative skills such as team building, quality improvement, service and performance excellence, staffing, operational aspects, financial management, human resources management, organizational integrity and compliant will be covered for both hospice and palliative care practice. Participants will become intimately knowledgeable about the standards and regulations for hospice and palliative care practice, and their incumbent compensation models. Enrollees will also learning how to develop, implement and maintain an ongoing data driven process that reflects the complexity of the organization and focuses on clinical, economic and humanistic outcomes. Learners will also assure strategic alignment of program operationalization with established organizational mission and vision with consideration for growth. Last, participants will learn about the principles of adult learning and staff development, including principles of instructional design, and methods of informal learning (including social media).

Leadership and Administration in Hospice and Palliative Care is also a concentration of study within the Master of Science in Palliative Care (PALC-MS) program. Credits earned in the stand-alone certificate program may be applied toward the PALC-MS degree requirements.

Program Admission

The target learner audience includes practitioners who are working in hospice and palliative care or aspire to do so, including physicians, advance practice nurses, nurses, pharmacists, physician assistants, social workers, chaplains and grief/bereavement specialists.

Candidates for admission must meet the minimum standards of admission established by the Graduate School and provide the requisite credentials. Admission to the certificate program is highly selective. A U.S. bachelor’s degree or its equivalent from a non-U.S. educational institution is required. No specific undergraduate course of study is required or recommended. Graduate Record Examinations are not required for admission.

Degree Requirements

Certificate candidates must complete a minimum of 12 credits. Students must maintain a minimum, cumulative grade-point average of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale. All courses must be taken for letter grade; courses taken as Pass/Fail (P/F) or Audit (AU) do not count toward the certificate. All requirements for the certificate must be completed within three years after admission and all credits for the certificate must be completed at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Complete guideline and requirements for progression and completion are outlined in the Academic Performance and Progress in a Postbaccalaureate Certificate Program section of this catalog.

Required Courses