Medical school expands teaching of palliative care

A program at the University of Pittsburgh targets third-year medical students, weaving end-of-life skills into clinical rotations.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. Dec. 19, 2005.

Ryan Li routinely visited a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis during his first year at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. What he learned was invaluable.

"It gave me a dose of reality," said Li, now in his second year of medical school. "It was a real eye-opener for me to see how terminal illness affects everyday life. It inhibits you from doing so much, but I also saw how the patient and caregiver are still living and still have plenty to do."

Li is one of a limited number of medical students at the University of Pittsburgh who have elected to learn about end-of-life issues. But by the 2007-08 academic year, every third-year student in the medical school will get hands-on experience in palliative care. Armed with a $1.1 million four-year grant from the National Cancer Institute, the school is about to integrate technology, informational text and palliative care experts into clinical rotations. As far as the school is aware, this is the first initiative of its kind.

David Barnard, PhD, director of the university's Institute to Enhance Palliative Care, hopes the project will prove effective in changing the culture of medicine, which often focuses on finding cures while neglecting the dying. Third-year students will be the target group, but Dr. Barnard expects that the residents and attending physicians who work alongside the students will learn new end-of-life skills as well.

"We're still learning how to teach this well," Dr. Barnard said. "There are a lot of barriers to teaching about end-of-life care in hospitals. We've designed this particular project to swat as many of the barrier flies as we can."