Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellowship
Want to Know More About Palliative Medicine?
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Want to Know More About Palliative Medicine?
Learn MoreWelcome from the Program Director: Haley H Vest, DO
Welcome—and thank you for your interest in the University of Virginia Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship.
This is a field that asks a lot of us: to navigate uncertainty, to see the “big picture” in incredibly complex situations, and to accompany patients and families through some of the hardest moments of their lives. And yet, those same challenging parts are often what make the work so meaningful. Our goal is to help you grow into this work with skill and confidence, develop a sustainable practice, and find joy in the privilege of doing it.
As a small program, we can invest deeply in each fellow. You will be known here. We prioritize mentorship, thoughtful feedback, and a learning environment where you feel supported as you take risks, reflect, and grow. Our faculty and interdisciplinary team care deeply about both the work we do and how we do it—and about helping you find your own approach within it. At the same time, being part of a large academic medical center gives our fellows and faculty the resources and institutional support to pursue meaningful scholarly work and professional development.
Dr. Haley Vest
We are proud to train physicians who are not only clinically excellent but who communicate with honesty and empathy, think critically, and lead with intention.
Charlottesville is also a wonderful place to call home during fellowship. It is welcoming, easy to settle into, and full of opportunities to connect—with the outdoors, with good food, with community, and with one another.
If this kind of training environment resonates with you, we would love to connect.
Warmly,
Haley Vest, DO
Program Director, Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship
University of Virginia
Program Overview and Highlights
A defining strength of our program is exposure to the full spectrum of serious illness—from foundational palliative care to the highest-acuity, medically complex patients. Fellows work closely with advanced heart failure and transplant teams (including LVAD and ECMO), stem cell transplant and oncology services, and patients with advanced organ failure (including in our dedicated Pulmonary Palliative Care clinic), while also gaining robust experience in hospice and community-based palliative care. This breadth ensures graduates are prepared for practice in any hospice or palliative care setting.
With protected didactic time, a balanced focus on advanced symptom management and communication, and individualized learning opportunities within a small program, graduates are well prepared for practice in any setting.
Highlights:
- Broad Clinical Training: Inpatient consults, outpatient palliative care and supportive oncology, and diverse hospice experiences
- High-Acuity Experience: Collaboration with transplant, LVAD, ECMO, stem cell transplant, oncology, and advanced organ failure programs in addition to routine consults
- Individualized Experience: Small program with flexible electives and tailored learning opportunities
- Advanced Symptom Management: Access to interventional pain and specialty collaborations for complex symptom care
- Protected Didactic Time: Dedicated educational time with a structured curriculum, including longitudinal communication skills training
- Strong Interdisciplinary Model: Work alongside nursing, social work, chaplaincy, pharmacy, and other key partners
- Fellow Well-Being: Supportive, close-knit program culture that values balance, flexibility, and the well-being of our fellows
- Balanced Skill Development: Intentional focus on both symptom management and communication to build confidence in complex clinical and goals-of-care work
- Scholarly & National Engagement: Support for scholarly work and attendance at the AAHPM Annual Assembly
Program Leadership
- Section Head, Palliative Medicine: W. Nat Timmins, MD
- Fellowship Program Director: Haley Vest, DO
A wide variety of 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 Medical Center
Our inpatient palliative care consultation service is located within the University of Virginia Medical Center – an almost 700-bed academic tertiary care hospital serving a large catchment area encompassing central, northern, and southwestern Virginia, as well as eastern West Virginia.
The busy interdisciplinary team comprises physicians, nurse practitioners, a social worker, a nurse liaison, and a chaplain, providing consulting services throughout the hospital. As a teaching service, we frequently host medical students, residents, and visiting fellows from other fields like Geriatrics, Nephrology, Addiction Medicine, and Pulmonology/Critical Care.
The Emily Couric Clinical Cancer Center
The Emily Couric Clinical Cancer Center is the outpatient home of the UVA Cancer Center and provides comprehensive, multidisciplinary cancer care in a single, patient-centered space. As part of an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, patients benefit from access to advanced therapies, clinical trials, and subspecialty expertise across the full spectrum of oncology care.
The Palliative Care Clinic is a well-established outpatient practice embedded within the cancer center, where multiple providers see patients daily in a busy, collaborative environment. The clinic provides specialty palliative care for patients with cancer at any stage of illness, with a focus on improving quality of life alongside disease-directed treatment.
While located within the cancer center, the clinic also cares for patients with non-cancer serious illnesses, including those with Sickle Cell Disease and advanced lung disease through our Pulmonary Palliative Care Clinic.
Fellows work closely with an interdisciplinary team—including nursing, social work, and chaplaincy—to manage complex symptoms such as pain, fatigue, nausea, and anxiety, while supporting patients and families through decision-making and conversations about serious illness. Co-location within the cancer center enables close collaboration with oncology teams and ready access to infusion services as needed.
Hospice of the Piedmont
Hospice of the Piedmont is a nonprofit, community-based hospice that has been providing compassionate, high-quality care to patients and families in Central Virginia for over 40 years. As a key clinical partner, it offers fellows robust experience across home hospice, inpatient hospice, and care in nursing facilities and a dedicated hospice house.
Fellows work closely with an experienced interdisciplinary team—including physicians, nurses, social workers, and chaplains—to deliver comprehensive, patient- and family-centered end-of-life care. Many of the hospice physicians are former UVA fellows and deeply committed to educating and mentoring our trainees, creating a supportive and engaging learning environment.
Long-Term Care & Geriatrics Collaboration
Fellows gain meaningful experience caring for patients with serious illness across long-term care settings, including nursing facilities and assisted living communities. In collaboration with the Geriatrics program, fellows participate in outpatient clinic experiences and longitudinal care that emphasize continuity, functional assessment, and goal-concordant care for older adults.
Elective opportunities include Clinical Ethics, Radiation Oncology, Oncology (outpatient subspecialty clinics), Addiction Medicine, and Psycho-Oncology/Psychiatry, with the ability to develop an elective tailored to your interests and career goals.
Hospice and Palliative Care Fellowship Core Curriculum: At the beginning of the program, fellows attend a series of introductory didactic sessions covering 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.
- Longitudinal communication skills curriculum: Over the course of six half-day sessions, a cohort of fellows from palliative care, geriatrics, and pulmonary/critical care are trained in advanced communication skills and given repeated opportunities to practice across a range of serious illness scenarios, with feedback, reflection, and progressive skill-building throughout the year.
- Palliative Care Journal Club: Fellows and attendings review core articles in palliative medicine 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 with a quality improvement faculty member over time 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)
- University of Virginia-based Academy for Excellence in Education: This group at UVA offers workshops to develop clinician-educators and support clinician research endeavors.
- University offerings of lectures and conferences in many related fields, which the fellow may attend as time and interest dictate.
Physicians
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Joshua S Barclay, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
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Eve Bargman, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
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Leslie J Blackhall, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Education
Section Head, Palliative Medicine
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Robert Goldstein, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
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David Y Ling, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
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Amy Salerno, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
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- Alex Schoifet MD
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William “Nat” Timmins, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Section Head, Palliative Medicine
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Sarah M Verga, DO
Associate Program Director, Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship
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Haley Health Vest, DO
Program Director, Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship
Nurse Practitioners
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Margaret M Barclay ACNP
Nurse Practitioner
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Meredith K Davis, AG-ACNP
Nurse Practitioner
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Lee Klemptner, NP
Nurse Practitioner
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Katharine Merrill, AG-ACNP
Nurse Practitioner
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Bethany Payne, AG-ACNP
Nurse Practitioner
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Evona Tollison, RN
Nurse Practitioner
Hospice of the Piedmont
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- Michael Dobson, MD
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Alina Fomovska, MD
Associate Program Director, Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship
Palliative Care Nurses
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- Michele Ferrell, RN, BSN
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- Emma Lloyd, RN
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- Kim Mechling, MSN, RN, PHN-BC
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- Kirsten Shifflett, RN
Palliative Care Social Worker
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- Michelle Niesen, MSW, LCSW
Other Interdisciplinary Team Members
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Andrew Whitman, PharmD
Lead clinical pharmacist – Hematology/Oncology
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Sonja Spradlin
Sr. Administrative Assistant
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Caleb Martin
Program Coordinator
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Levi Bannerman M. Div
Palliative Care Chaplain
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Ann Marie Smith M. Div
UVA Cancer Center Chaplain
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 and Palliative Medicine Fellowship
The Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellowship program accepts one fellow each year; fellowships last 12 months with a tentative start date of July 7, 2027.
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, internal medicine-pediatrics, psychiatry, 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 2026 (2027 ERAS cycle), interviews will be conducted as virtual half-day sessions, starting in late August/early September and concluding in October.
- For the 2027 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 or COMLEX scores (Applicants must show evidence of the successful passage of USMLE Step 3/COMLEX Level 3 before entering our fellowship program.)
Two centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson established the University of Virginia and the nation’s 10th medical school, which has since grown into a nationally renowned academic medical center committed to providing outstanding patient care, educating future healthcare leaders, and discovering better ways to treat disease.
Learn more about The University.
UVA Health System strives to continually expand its mission: patient care, education, and research. To support this, it is actively improving its physical facilities, recruiting and retaining excellent faculty and staff, expanding its clinical programs, strengthening recognized centers of excellence, and streamlining processes for healthcare delivery.
Learn more about The Medical Center.
The Charlottesville-Albemarle region boasts an outstanding array of accomplishments and attractions. Each year, thousands of tourists view the Grounds of the University of Virginia, the homes of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, and the wineries of Albemarle County. The Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Valley offer plentiful recreational opportunities, adding to the high quality of life provided by the area’s historical character and natural beauty. A vibrant University and student landscape supply cultural and social outlets for any interest.
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 and Employee Assistance Program.
Visitor Lodging
Several hotels and motels are close to the University and Medical Center (some within walking distance). UVA also has places to stay.
Please arrange airport transportation in advance. The local UVA Health System shuttle service is available for transportation around the University area.
Relocation
Employment
For more information on the UVA Hospice and Palliative
Medicine Fellowship Program:
Program Coordinator
Caleb Martin
ajb9fa@virginia.edu
Phone: 434.243.6832
Fax: 434.924.0075
Program Director
Haley Vest, DO
XDB7QJ@uvahealth.org
Address:
UVA Division of General, Geriatric, Palliative, and Hospital Medicine
81 Hospital Drive, 6th Floor, Private Clinics Building, Room 6563B
Charlottesville, VA 22908
Phone: 434-243-4290
Fax: 434-244-9406