Easing the Challenges of Living with Dementia: How Palliative Care & Hospice Can Improve Quality of Life

Dr. Grant Smith is a palliative care physician and Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine. He is the medical director of the Stanford Palliative Care Center of Excellence (PCCOE) Community Partnerships Team, and he is the lead for quality improvement in advance care planning in the Division of Primary Care and Population Health. As part of the Stanford faculty, he is an attending on the palliative care inpatient service and as a provider in the outpatient palliative care clinic in Palo Alto.

Dr. Carla Perissinotto is Professor in the Division of Geriatrics, Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and is board certified in internal medicine, geriatrics, and palliative medicine.  She served as the associate chief for geriatrics clinical programs at UCSF from 2017 to 2021.  In this role she oversaw and developed new clinical programs serving older adults across care settings.   For over a decade she has worked in home-based primary care.  More recently, she has begun working with VITAS hospice as an associate medical director, working to rethink how we care for patients with terminal dementia.  Dr. Perissinotto has gained national and international recognition for her research on the effects of loneliness on the health of older adults.  Her research and advocacy has focused on integration of loneliness assessments in health care, and evaluation and implementation of community-based programs focused on ameliorating loneliness and isolation in adults.

Reverend Emily Linderman, M.Div. serves as a clinical chaplain at Stanford Health Care (SHC) on their inpatient Palliative Care team. She also serves as a faculty member for the SHC APP Fellowship leadership team, co-facilitating a monthly communication series. She is an ordained minister with the United Church of Christ and a member of the Open Heart Project (OHP), an online Buddhist sangha. Emily is a spiritual director and consultant in private practice. She remains influenced by her first career as an architect and project manager as well as the queer, embodied, Afro-centric church community – Liberation UCC – who sponsored and nurtured her as a spiritual care leader and preacher.

Michael Polisso, LCSW,  is Licensed Clinical Social Worker currently working as the Inpatient Palliative Care Social Worker at Stanford Health Care. He has spent the last 4 years of his career supporting families with chronic, life limiting illness while they are in the hospital. In addition to his work, Mike also finds immense joy in spending time with his growing family.