HMS Educational Opportunities
The following opportunities are available to people within the Harvard Medical School community.
Living with Life-Threatening Illness
The Center for Psycho-Oncology and Palliative Care Research Seminar Series
Living with Life-Threatening Illness
Caring for patients at the end of life is a basic task of doctoring. This interdisciplinary course introduces fundamental knowledge, attitudes, and skills for working with dying patients and their families. Each student will be assigned to a patient with a life-threatening illness, and the focus of learning for the course will be the students’ ongoing relationship with this patient and his or her family.
Several structured learning experiences (panel discussions, case discussions, seminars, role plays, and lectures) will address topics such as responses to suffering, symptom control, grief and loss, spiritual concerns, cultural issues, and ethical dilemmas. Weekly small - group discussions will allow students to share their experiences and receive feedback from patients and faculty, and to integrate didactic material with their clinical experience.
Course Goals and Objectives
- Students will gain an understanding of the experience, for patients and families, of a life-threatening illness
- Students will enhance skills in creating a relationship, which fosters the disclosure of intimate and sensitive material about responses to illness
- Students will acquire skills in communicating with their patients and their families about desires for end–of-life care
- Students will learn the most common physical and psychological symptoms that accompany terminal illness
- Students will learn about different cultural, spiritual, and religious constructs of the meaning of death and the impact of the experience of life-threatening illness
- Students will learn the basic elements of the hospice philosophy of care
- Students will explore the roles of ethical principles (e.g. autonomy, beneficence, non-malfeasance) in decision-making near the end of life
- Students will learn the phenomenology and course of the grieving process and its impact on physical and psychological health
- Students will gain understanding of physicians’ adaptive and maladaptive responses to dying patients.
Course Requirements
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Class participation. Participation in class discussions, case presentations, and small group discussions.
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Patient Visits. Scheduled visits with patients and family members. Travel to patient’s homes or local hospitals will be necessary. Locations for patient visits are along public transit routes; no car necessary.
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Readings. Reference to assigned readings during class discussions and small group sessions.
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Final Paper. A reflective paper demonstrating proficiency of course learning objectives.
Contact
For more information please contact Tamara Vesel
The Center for Psycho-Oncology and
Palliative Care Research Seminar Series
12:00-1:00pm; Smith Building, Room 304
Wednesdays, November 2009 - June 2010
November 11, 2009 - Stacy Gray, MD
December 9, 2009 - Ellen McCarthy, PhD
February 10, 2010 -Alexi Wright, MD
April 14, 2010 - Bill Pirl, MD
June 9, 2010 - TBD
Contact
For further information please contact Maureen Clark at (617) 632-3248