Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellowship

UVA Medical Center

Diverse clinical training settings include the UVA Medical Center, the ambulatory clinic in the Emily Couric Clinical Cancer Center, the Hospice of the Piedmont, and several local inpatient hospice care facilities. In all settings, care is provided for patients across the continuum of serious illness, encompassing diagnosis, treatment, remission, cure, and end-of-life care.

UVA was named a “Palliative Care Leadership Center” in September 2015 by the Center to Advance Palliative Care, based on “clinical excellence, outstanding reputation, and experience” and “use of evidence-based best practices for palliative care.”

UVA Inpatient Palliative Care Consult Service

Emily Couric Clinical Cancer Center

The busy interdisciplinary team comprises a physician, nurse practitioner, dedicated social worker, nurse liaison, and a chaplain resident, providing consulting services throughout the hospital, located in a 600-bed academic tertiary care hospital serving a large catchment area. UVA Hospital also includes a dedicated inpatient hospice unit. The inpatient consult service handles more than 1,600 new consults annually, resulting in over 5,700 patient encounters.

Inpatient pediatric service:  Fellows rotate on a dedicated inpatient pediatric palliative consult service for two weeks.

The Continuity Clinic in the Emily Couric Clinical Cancer Center provides supportive care Monday through Friday. Fellows see patients on a one-day-per-week basis. UVA is a CAPC-designated Palliative Care Leadership Center, with a focus on outpatient clinical services.

Hospice Care

Community hospice services are provided through local hospice organizations, including Hospice of the Piedmont. Fellows actively participate in interdisciplinary team meetings and provide home visits. Additionally, inpatient hospice care is offered through Hospice of the Piedmont, and inpatient hospice beds are available at the University of Virginia Health System. Long-Term Care Facilities: Fellows gain experience in addressing care across the continuum, including in local long-term care facilities

Long-Term Care Facilities: Fellows gain experience addressing care across the continuum, including in local long-term care facilities.

Rotation Schedule

• Four to five months: Inpatient Palliative Care Service
• Two to three weeks: Geriatrics/Long-term Care
• One month: Research and Quality Improvement Project
• Two months: Electives
• Required: Two-week rotations in pediatric palliative care (with a dedicated team at UVA) and interventional pain anesthesiology
• 10-week dedicated rotation in hospice care
• Weekly full-day outpatient clinic sessions in the UVA Palliative Care Clinic

Conference Schedule

• Hospice and Palliative Care Fellowship Core Curriculum: At the beginning of the program, fellows attend a series of introductory didactics that cover key palliative care topics. This familiarizes the fellow with faculty and ensures baseline knowledge. Subsequently, fellows have didactic sessions throughout the year.
• Palliative Conference: The weekly interdisciplinary series is the primary educational conference for all palliative and affiliated providers at the University of Virginia (UVA). It includes didactics, clinical case presentations, journal discussions, quality improvement, research, and service line discussions.
• Palliative Care Journal Club: Fellows and attendings review core palliative medicine articles throughout the year.  Additionally, fellows discuss and present journal articles several times a year during the palliative conference.
• Resiliency and self-care: Fellows participate in regular remembrance sessions offered in the inpatient consultation service and outpatient Palliative Care Clinic through nursing and chaplain group leaders, meet with chaplains quarterly for small group sessions to process their reactions to suffering and loss,  and can participate in the Mindfulness Course for Healthcare Employees (mindfulness-based stress reduction) through the UVA Mindfulness Center.
• Quality Improvement: Fellows meet longitudinally with a quality improvement faculty member to design their quality improvement project.
• Supportive Care Tumor Board (weekly) multi-disciplinary case discussion involving palliative medicine, interventional pain anesthesiology, psychiatry, social work, pharmacy, dieticians, and chaplaincy addressing complex clinical care issues.
• Internal Medicine Grand Rounds (weekly)
• Evidence-based lecture series
• Department of Medicine Research Conference
• University of Virginia-based Academy for Excellence in Education: This group at UVA offers workshops for developing clinician-educators and supporting clinician research endeavors.
• University offerings of lectures and conferences in many related fields, which the fellow may attend as time and interest dictate

Leveraging Differences

• We welcome, value, and respect individual differences and perspectives in our patients, our colleagues, and our trainees.
• We see difference as an essential ingredient for innovation, growth, and superior clinical care.

Physicians

Nurse Practitioners

Hospice of the Piedmont

Palliative Care Nurses

Palliative Care Social Worker

Other Interdisciplinary Team Members

2025-2026 Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellow

Ziad El Hassan, MD

Dr. Ziad El Hassan completed his medical studies at the University of Balamand Faculty of Medicine and Medical Sciences. He then went on to a 2-year Special/Combined Program in Radiology before pivoting to an Internal Medicine Residence at Johnston Memorial Hospital in Abingdon, VA. He speaks several languages and enjoys snowboarding, hiking, and volleyball.

2024-2025 Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellow

Alexander Schoifet, MD

Dr. Alexander Schoifet completed his undergraduate studies in Food Science at Cornell University. He then attended Cooper Medical School of Rowan University. He completed his Internal Medicine residency at Cooper University Hospital in New Jersey in 2024. He has done quality improvement work on confirming code status on hospital admission and has been creating an Advance Care Planning section in the hospital’s EMR. On the personal side, he is an avid chess player.

2023-2024 Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellows

Kellie Mitchell, MD

Dr. Mitchell completed her UVA Emergency Medicine Residency in June 2023. She has a BS in Biochemistry from Mississippi State University and completed her medical degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. When not practicing medicine, she is creating and moving. She has competed in aerial dance and enjoys music, painting, and writing poetry and fiction.

Maki Nakazato, MD

Dr. Nakazato comes to us from California. She completed her undergraduate degree at UCLA and then moved east to get her medical degree from Thomas Jefferson University. She stayed in Philadelphia for her residency in family medicine. Afterward, she traveled back to the West Coast for a fellowship in geriatrics at Stanford, which she will complete in June 2023. Maki loves to sing and read Japanese novels.

2022-2023 Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellows

Paul Donegan, DO

Ask Dr. Donegan how he arrived at UVA for his Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship, and he will tell you the journey was anything but straightforward. Rather than a direct line between undergraduate education at Drexel University and his recent Internal Medicine residency at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center with a stop for medical school in between, Dr. Donegan studied and obtained his law degree at the New England School of Law in Boston, MA. This legal background has led to an ongoing interest in healthcare advocacy, health law, and ethics.

Naimish Mehta, MD

Dr. Mehta comes to UVA from Hattiesburg, MS, where he completed an Internal Medicine Residency at Merit Health in 2019. He completed his medical studies at Ross University School of Medicine in Barbados and studied and lived in Canada.

He collects unusual coins and enjoys outdoor sports.

2021-2022 Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellows

Nathan Dewey, MD

Dr. Dewey grew up in Colorado Springs, CO, and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Virginia Tech. Ask him about his lightsaber.

Lauren Gnagy, MD

Dr. Gnagy is a family physician who came to UVA with her husband from Indiana. After her fellowship, she plans to return to Indiana to practice primary care and palliative medicine.

2020-2021 Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellows

Michael Dobson, MD

Dr. Dobson grew up in Elliot Lake, Ontario, and learned about end-of-life care while volunteering at Toronto’s Kensington Hospice.  He attended Saba University School of Medicine and subsequently did a residency in rural Family Medicine at the University of Nebraska.

Amy Salerno, MD

Dr. Salerno attended medical school at the University of Pittsburgh. She did her residency in Internal Medicine at Emory University and subsequently did a fellowship in Health Policy and Health Services Research at Yale University.  She has developed a medical career focused on health equity through clinical care, community health, population health, and working with vulnerable populations.

2019-2020 Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellow

Dr. Alina Fomovska, MD

Residency: Emergency Medicine: UCSF
Current location: Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA

2018-2019 Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellow

Margaret C. Lynch, MD

Residency: Internal Medicine University of California, San Francisco
Current location: Hospice of the Shenandoah

Application Requirements for UVA Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellowship

The Hospice & Palliative Medicine fellowship program accepts two fellows each year; fellowships last 12 months.

Applicants Must Have

• M.D. or D.O. degree
• Three or more years of residency training in an ACGME-accredited program in internal medicine, family medicine, psychiatry and neurology, anesthesiology, surgery, emergency medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, or physical medicine and rehabilitation.
• U.S. citizenship, permanent residency, or a J-1 visa.

How to Apply

• Our program participates in the Medical Specialties Matching Program (MSMP) Fellowship Match.
• Applications are accepted through ERAS.
• In 2025 (2026 ERAS cycle), interviews will be conducted as virtual half-day sessions, starting in late August and concluding in October.
• For the 2026 ERAS cycle, our program will participate in program and geographic signaling offered through the AAMC’s ERAS program.  We evaluate applications holistically, considering the presence of signaling, to match a talented and diverse group of applicants and minimize bias in the evaluation process.
• The use of a program signal by a qualified applicant will play a role in the program’s decision to offer an interview.

Required Documents for ERAS Application

• Curriculum vitae
• Personal statement
• Three letters of recommendation
• USMLE scores (Applicants must show evidence of the successful passage of USMLE Step 3 before entering our fellowship program.)

Fellow wellness is a top priority of our program and is a factor in all decisions related to the fellowship program. There is an abundance of resources available. See information on GME well-being resources and learn more about the Faculty & Employee Assistance Program.

For more information on the UVA Hospice & Palliative
Medicine Fellowship Program, please contact:

Program Director

W. Nat Timmins, MD
WNT5KH@virginia.edu
UVA Division of General, Geriatric, Palliative &
Hospital Medicine
81 Hospital Drive
6th Floor Private Clinics Bldg. Room 6563B
Charlottesville, VA 22908
Phone: 434.243.4290
Fax: 434.244.9406

Program Coordinator

Caleb Martin
ajb9fa@virginia.edu
Phone: 434.243.6832
Fax: 434.924.0075