Initiative to Teach Palliative Care to Medical Students

National Cancer Institute has been received by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPMC, PA, USA) to be used for integrating end-of-life issues into the school's curriculum.

The long-term goals of the new curriculum are to increase students' exposure to the scientific and humanistic knowledge necessary for excellent end-of-life care, to develop learning experiences that provide students with prolonged exposure to dying patients, and to increase the number of teachers trained in end-of-life issues. Curriculum changes will be phased in over a period of several years. A new course beginning in the fall of 2001 for first-year students will involve visits to critically ill and dying patients over the course of the entire semester.

"Physicians, patients, and families often find it difficult to talk about preferences for treatment near the end of life and to respect those preferences,” said Robert Arnold, M.D., director of the UPMC Comprehensive Palliative Care Program. "Our primary goal is a four-year medical school program in which each year makes the optimal, appropriate contribution to effective and compassionate care of patients near the end of life.”





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