When will we be exposed to end-of-life care considerations?
I found this to be interesting: "Rather than learning about diseases, students
confront complex stories and have to choose the right
symptom on which to build their differential." I look forward to having enough of a knowledge base to be able to do this.
And it is important to me to be warm in my interactions with others. This article suggests that many end-of-life care teaching/observation experiences are cold instead. How much input will I be able to have, personally, in my training encounters? Will I essentially be a static observer?
Says the article:
"As palliative care physicians who have spent
the last 20 years trying to change how the medical culture
views death, we have our work cut out for us."
And how are they trying to change how the medical culture views death? Is it a metaphysical understanding that they're looking at? Or?
I guess the issue is on my mind a bit as I'm making my way through The Magic Mountain again.
And my own personal answer to this found in the golden rule. How would I want to be treated if I were in a similar state? My own inchoate ideas will form the foundation of the development of my approach to end-of-life care; built upon them will be my experiences in clinical settings, seeing approaches that work well in the providing a mixture of some physical, mental, and spiritual comfort, along with others approaches that are not effective.
Dr. Hafferty, nice to see that you received a citation in this article!
1 comment:
You write, "My own inchoate ideas will form the foundation of the development of my approach to end-of-life care; . . . "
As well as being 'early staged' ideas - they are likely quite well formed. I think that one of the greatest challenges of the medical student is to decide which ideas they come to medical school with should be allowed to "move" to the medical culture norm - and, which should not. If you find a normative view of how death is handled in medicine to be more 'primitive' and less compassionate than those you hold now - perhaps your current ideas should not be discounted as 'half baked' . . . but, rather taught to others.
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