Christian T. Sinclair, MD

Professional Background

Dr. Christian Sinclair is an Associate Professor in the Division of Palliative Medicine at the University of Kansas Health System, and the Section Lead of Outpatient Palliative Care.

After graduating from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in 2000, he completed an Internal Medicine residency at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC in 2003. Directly after his residency, he became the first fellow in the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship at the Hospice and Palliative Care Center in Winston-Salem, NC.

Moving to Kansas City in 2004, he served for 8 years as an Associate Hospice Medical Director at Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care. His experience with inpatient hospice care during his fellowship in Winston-Salem was fundamental to the creation of the first inpatient hospice facility in the Kansas City Metro in 2006.

In 2005, alongside Dr. Ann Allegre and Dr. Karin Porter-Williamson, he was a co-founder of the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship at Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Medicine, eventually becoming the Fellowship Program Director.

In 2009, he was elected to the AAHPM Board of Directors as the first fellowship trained physician and youngest board member in the history of the organization. He served on the board for nine years and served as President of AAHPM from 2016-2017. Dr. Sinclair was nominated and selected by his peers as an AAHPM Visionary in 2018 for exemplary contributions to the field. In 2019, he received the AAHPM Gerald H. Holman
Distinguished Service Award, presented to those who have advanced the mission of the AAHPM in a significant and lasting way through outstanding and dedicated service.

In 2013, he was selected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine’s “Committee on Transforming End-Of-Life Care” through the National Academy of Sciences. That committee worked for two years to produce the report "Dying in America: Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preferences Near the End of Life" in 2014.

In 2014, Dr. Sinclair joined the Division of Palliative Medicine at the University of Kansas with a focus on developing the newly emerging field of outpatient palliative care. He became the Section Lead for Outpatient Palliative Care in 2018 and grown the clinics to now serve thousands of patients every year.

• Undergrad - Community College, Diablo Valley College
• BA, Biological Anthropology, Univ. of California-San Diego
• MD, Medicine, Univ. of California-San Diego
• Residency, Internal Medicine, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, Winston-Salem, NC
• Clinical Fellowship, Hospice and Palliative Medicine, Hospice & Palliative Care Center, Winston-Salem, NC

• Kansas City Society of Palliative Medicine, Kansas City Society of Palliative Medicine, President, 2022 - 2023
• Palliative Outpatient in Practice Study Group, Chair, 2022 - 2023
• The University of Kansas Health System, Cancer Center - CoC Cancer Committee Member, Member, 2022 - 2026
• The University of Kansas Health System, Cancer Center Decisions Committee, Member, 2022 - Present
• The University of Kansas Health System, Cancer Center - Strategic Planning - 2021, Member, 2021 - Present
• Kansas City Society of Palliative Medicine, Kansas City Society of Palliative Medicine, Secretary, 2020 - 2022
• The University of Kansas Health System, Opioid Stewardship Subcommittee - Planning Group, Member, 2020 - 2022

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Research

Overview

Dr. Christian Sinclair co-founded the interprofessional palliative care research group at the University of Kansas Medical Center in 2016 with Joanna Brooks, PhD, MBE and Carla Keirns, MD, PhD, MSc, FACP. He lead the group from 2016 until 2022, when he helped advocate for a new leadership position of Section Lead for research to advance the division's scholarly work.

Dr. Sinclair mentors many learners and peers through research studies, academic writing, presentations, posters and other scholarly efforts.

Research areas of interest: outpatient palliative care, palliative care registry, palliative care access and utilization, end-of-life quality of care, prognosis science, predictive risk models, and interprofessional teamwork.

• Landzaat LH, Sinclair CT, Rosielle DA. 2010. Continuous-flow left ventricular assist device.. The New England journal of medicine, 362 (12), 1149; author reply 1149
• Sinclair CT, Porter-Williamson K. 2004. Health care delivery in the Texas prison system.. JAMA, 292 (18), 2212; author reply 2212-3
• Sinclair CT. 2004. Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators and complications.. The New England journal of medicine, 350 (7), 734-5; author reply 734-5
• Morrison Laura J, Sinclair Christian T. 2005. Next-of-Kin Responses and Do-Not-Resuscitate Implications for Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators. Annals of Internal Medicine, 142 (8), 676-677. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-142-8-200504190-00022
• Sinclair CT. 2008. Re: Pregnancy care: an apprenticeship for palliative care?. Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine : JABFM, 21 (6), 580; author reply 580
• Sinclair CT. 2006. Communicating a prognosis in advanced cancer.. The journal of supportive oncology, 4 (4), 201-4
• Morgan AA, Sinclair CT. 2017. Neuroleptics for Delirium: More Research Is Needed.. JAMA internal medicine, 177 (7), 1054-1055
• Sinclair Christian T, Kalender-Rich Jessica L, Griebling Tomas L, Porter-Williamson Karin. 2015. Palliative Care of Urologic Patients at End of Life. Clinics in Geriatric Medicine, 31 (4), 667-678. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cger.2015.07.002
• Glare Paul A, Sinclair Christian T. 2008. Palliative Medicine Review: Prognostication. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 11 (1), 84-103. https://doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2008.9992
• Kamal Arif H, Bull Janet H, Wolf Steven P, Swetz Keith M, Shanafelt Tait D, Ast Katherine, Kavalieratos Dio, Sinclair Christian T, Abernethy Amy P. 2016. RETRACTED: Prevalence and Predictors of Burnout Among Hospice and Palliative Care Clinicians in the U.S.. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 51 (4), 690-696. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2015.10.020