Peer-designed parents' bereavement panel: Exposing first-year medical students to pediatric end-of-life care

Peer-designed parents' bereavement panel: Exposing first-year medical students to pediatric end-of-life care

Rolfes M; Sunde K; Jones A; Starr S

Pediatrics

2018

Bereavement; care behavior; child; clinical article; comfort; conference abstract; controlled study; curriculum; female; human; human experiment; learning; Likert scale; male; medical school; medical student; pediatric oncologist; pediatrics; preclinical study; terminal care

Program Goals: Despite the Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME) mandatory requirement for the incorporation of end-of-life care education into medical school curriculum, very few studies have reported successful approaches, and standardization across medical schools is lacking. Furthermore, very little effort has focused on the incorporation of pediatric-specific end-of-life care education into the preclinical years. The purpose of this study is to determine whether a bereavement panel consisting of parents who had a child pass away from a life threatening condition: (1) improved first-year medical students' self-reported ability to interact with children suffering from life-threatening conditions and their families, and (2) changed students' opinions about pediatric end-of-life care curriculum. Evaluation: A total of 23 first-year medical students attended a two-hour panel consisting of four parents who had a child pass away from a life threatening condition. The panel was part of a weeklong, peer-designed elective focused on exposing students to various aspects of pediatrics. It consisted of a question-and-answer discussion facilitated by a pediatric oncologist, with a focus on the parents' positive and negative experiences with different aspects of health care throughout their child's illness. Pre-panel and post-panel surveys were administered, asking students to report agreement with various statements using a 10- point Likert scale.

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