A medical school course in coping with death: an opportunity to consider some basic health care issues.
Courses on death and related topics are frequently considered nonessential in medical school curricula; however medical students and residents often express their feelings of unpreparedness to cope with deaths of their patients, surviving family members and their own feelings about death. This paper describes a short, elective course taught by a single instructor who, by writing about it, wishes to encourage others to begin to fill this gap in medical education. Student evaluations and representative reaction comments are included.
D003419:Crisis Intervention; D003479:Curriculum; D003643:Death; D004501:Education, Medical; D006117:Grief; D006127:Group Structure; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009769:Object Attachment; D012650:Self Disclosure; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology