Medical Students Meet Hospice Upwards Close

Photo past times Gabe Souza, Portland Press Herald

Here's a wonderful story from University of New England medical schoolhouse inward Maine past times Kelley Bouchard at the Portland Press Herald.  It relates the sense of pairs of medical students who chose to pass merely about deep immersion fourth dimension at Gosnell Memorial Hospice House. (One of the students, Caitlin Farrell, is an alumna of the Telluride Patient Safety Camp.)

McVan as well as Farrell are amidst iv students inward UNE’s College of Osteopathic Medicine inward Biddeford who, at their ain request, spent recent weekends living as well as working at the dwelling identify for terminally sick patients. The airplane pilot Hospice Immersion Project provided unique exposure to end-of-life aid inward a acre whose medical schools are giving brusque shrift or largely ignoring a growing need for preparation inward long-term, palliative as well as hospice care. It besides was an intense introduction to the realities of dying as well as decease for students on the cusp of becoming physicians.

Admitted inward pairs, the second-year med students spent 2 days learning from hospice staff as well as helping to aid for patients as well as their families. They stayed inward suites where people had died as well as their loved ones mourned. They followed nurses as well as physicians on their rounds as well as journaled near what they saw as well as heard. They got to know patients as well as their families as well as learned what it takes to aid for people inward their concluding hours.

There were merely about surprises:

“I was surprised how uplifting it was,” Gaul said. “Of class it was sad, witnessing the loss of each patient, but it besides was a celebration of each patient’s life. The communication as well as the unloose energy that each nurse as well as medico brought to each patient was amazing. It was beautiful to see.”

The students as well as thence reported dorsum on their experiences to their classmates:

Farrell urged her classmates to last compassionate but honest amongst their patients when dealing amongst issues related to decease as well as dying. And to covert as well as promote hospice aid every bit a agency of experiencing decease every bit a natural locomote of life.

“We don’t get got a selection inward this,” Farrell said. “We get got to get got these conversations. We every bit physicians can’t act out of fear.”

Share this post