Vision and Mission
We believe that every member of the healthcare team can help people living with a serious illness align care with what’s most important.
Our mission is to foster a culture of care that ensures patients and families living with serious illness participate in timely, effective, and sensitive goals of care conversations that are documented, translated into patient-centered care plans, and communicated across sites of care.
Our Team
Meet our PACT team members below. For more information, please contact us at pact@northwestern.edu.
Leadership
Eytan Szmuilowicz, MD
Eytan Szmuilowicz, MD, is the Principal Investigator of the PACT program. He practices palliative care at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and is Director of the Section of Palliative Medicine. He has developed and studied palliative care curricula for hospitalists, residents, nurses, and medical students, with particular focus on teaching challenging patient-clinician communication skills. He has received numerous teaching awards and in 2010 received a Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician Award for excellence in end-of-life care.
Gordon J. Wood, MD, MSCI, FAAHPM
Gordon J. Wood, MD, MSCI, FAAHPM is Associate Professor in the Section of Palliative Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He serves as the Co-Primary Investigator for The Preference-Aligned Communication and Treatment (PACT) Project. He is a nationally recognized educator with a particular interest in communication skills training.
Liza Rivnay
Liza Rivnay is a Research Project Manager on the PACT team, currently working on integrating PACT into participating hospitals and organizing in-person communication skills training sessions.
PACT Faculty
PACT Mentors were instrumental in developing and implementing PACT in our original cohort. They are: