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Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Hospice and Palliative Care in Six Words - Celebrating Pallimed's 11th Anniversary

by Christian Sinclair

Eleven years ago today Drew Rosielle posted his first post to pallimed.blogspot.com* about Hospice and Palliative Medicine becoming slated to be officially recognized as a specialty by ABIM and ABFM! We had a great year commemorating our 10th year anniversary. We posted 123 new posts to pallimed.org, a new 4-year high (that we are planning on breaking this year!) The Pallimed Facebook page flew past 10,000 likes, #hpm chat is still going strong, and we are starting to explore other social media platforms like Instagram.

We still have a lot of work to do ahead this year, like:
  • further establishing the Pallimed Foundation which will allow us to make Pallimed sustainable and consistent going into the future
  • finding a few new assistant editors willing to help writers get their work published
  • discovering a new class of Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellows who are interested in digital communications in health care
  • getting back to our roots featuring more journal article reviews
  • streamlining content curation and distribution across all the Pallimed branded channels - all 11 of them!
  • partnering with other key blogs and digital media through the Pallimed Network to highlight the best writing on hospice and palliative care
We are always on the lookout for enthusiastic and self-starting volunteers, because many hands make light work. If you are interested in being part of Pallimed and have a few hours to invest in the future of hospice and palliative care, then please take a look at our Pallimed Opportunities page.

So now on to the fun! The internet has given us many great new ways to highlight the things we love. One of the more popular memes has been #(Blank)inSixWords. Some variants change the number, but the essence is you have to distill the meaning of something into a small amount of words. The idea originally spang from the Six-Word Memoir, some believe to be made famous by Ernest Hemingway who wrote: Baby Shoes for sale. Never worn. That would surely be Grief and Bereavement in six words.

A few months ago, Dr. Mark Reid (@MedicalAxioms) started the hashtag #SpecialtiesInSixWords on Twitter and palliative care featured prominently. Here are a few of the contributions:

  • Palliative Care: We can stop hurting you now. - Mark Reid @Meidcalaxioms
  • palliative care: getting it right near the end - Alex Puxty @apuxty
  • Palliative Care: Help you live 'til you die - HCSM News @HCSMNews
  • Palliative Care: Pain Relief, Symptom Management, Patient Dignity. - Phillip Anthony @nurse_panthony
  • Palliative Care - "I'm so sorry. Cup of tea?" - @Emmcm1982
  • Palliative Care: I want to see my horse. - @DrJohnAquino
  • Palliative Medicine: All medicine's palliative; we're just honest - @AlexBThomson

So to celebrate 11 years of Pallimed, we invite you to share your own Hospice and Palliative Care in Six Words on your social media platform of choice. You can choose Hospice alone, Palliative Care alone or include both, so make sure your six-words begin with what you are describing. Later this year we will feature the different professionals or aspects in six-word stories so

On Facebook: Share them in the comments section of this post
On Twitter: Include #PallimedTurns11 and @pallimed
On Instagram: Include #PallimedTurns11 and @pallimedblog
On Tumblr: Include #PallimedTurns11 as a tag for your post

We will be highlighting some of the best through the year, and will make a few into images to spread around the internet (for which we will ask for permission). Feel free to make an image with free tools like Canva.

We look forward to what you can think of! Thanks for sticking with us for 11 years!

Christian Sinclair, MD is the editor of Pallimed, president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and a palliative care doc at the University of Kansas.

*That used to be our official address!

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