Article Citation: Catherine Sweeney, Gerardine Lynch, Ali Khashan, Bridget Maher, Marie Murphy, Tony O’Brien; ‘The impact of a medical undergraduate student-selected module in palliative care’; BMJ Supportive and  Palliative Care (2014; 4: 92-97)
Abstract, Full Text, PDF

Death is arguably the most important thing about us. It is our ‘condition of creation’ so to speak, and to deny its existence is to diminish life.

Palliative medicine remains a small part of the undergraduate medical curriculum, yet both medical students and junior doctors will regularly encounter patients at the end of their lives within all specialties.

All healthcare professionals should receive effective and regular training in palliative care and bereavement. This obviously ensures good patient care, but also provokes reflection on how the individual deals with death in a professional and personal context.

Doctors are known for their obscure and, at times, inappropriate dinner party conversation. However, jovial remarks made about tragic patient cases do not necessarily reflect a hard personality or supremely stable mental state, but may be a cathartic release of suppressed emotions.

Many of us have witnessed someone dying in a horrific or traumatising way. To ignore or bury our feelings about such events crushes the opportunity for reflection, which could both improve subsequent clinical practice and maintain a positive mental state.

‘How people die remains in the memory of those who live on’: Dame Cicely Saunders.

Emilie M. Green, Foundation Year 1 Doctor, Whipps Cross Hospital