Join Bridget Sumser and Camille Borgo of Mettle for a conversation on accompaniment. Bridget will focus on what accompaniment looks like in practice and how professionals working in clinical, organizational, and community settings can incorporate this approach into their own work.
At Mettle, the term accompaniment refers to ongoing support through serious illness, caregiving, grief, and dying, drawing on familiar areas of palliative care practice such as care planning and transitions, health-care navigation, caregiver support, advance care planning, grief and loss support, and counseling around the psychosocial effects of serious illness.
The emphasis is on continuity. Rather than treating these needs as separate interventions, accompaniment means staying present with patients and families as illness and circumstances change, walking alongside them through decisions, relationships, caregiving demands, loss, and transitions over time.
These services address needs that often fall outside the scope of disease-directed medical care. Patients and families may receive excellent clinical treatment while still needing help making sense of their choices, adapting to changing roles, communicating with clinicians and one another, planning ahead, and coping with how serious illness reshapes daily life.
Bridget Sumser, LCSW, MSW, Head of Practice at Mettle, has a professional background that includes serious illness, caregiving, grief and loss, care transitions, health-care navigation, and advance care planning. She completed the Zelda Foster Fellowship in Palliative and End-of-Life Care and an Interprofessional Palliative Care Fellowship at Beth Israel. She is co-editor of Palliative Care: A Guide for Health Social Workers and holds faculty appointments at Fordham University and UCSF.
Camille Borgo, MA, CPMSM, Head of Growth at Mettle, has more than 20 years of experience in hospice and health care, with a background in operations, provider networks, credentialing, and expanding access to hospice and palliative-care services. At Mettle, she works with health systems, clinicians, employers, and community organizations to connect people with its services.