palliative care rotation

[freelancewriter]

I've heard that some med schools require students to complete a rotation in palliative care (palliative medicine).

Is such a rotation required at your school? Made available? Encouraged?

I was talking with a palliative medicine fellowship PD the other day, and his view was that students who completed such a rotation had never thought of this as a career path, but became very interested during their rotation.

It seems like an almost unknown, but potentially very rewarding, career.

But back to my original questions: Is such a rotation required at your school? Made available? Encouraged?

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[Kalel]

I've never heard of a school that required a complete palliative care rotation, but most schools do require students to obtain some exposure to palliative care. At my school, we were required to visit a hospice 2-3 times and get to know a patient there. I had a really sad experience there. By coincidence, I ended up meeting one of my father's co-workers who was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in her 50's. She ended up passing away before her father did. She was so depressed, and I never knew what to say to make her feel better. I think that every med student should have some exposure to palliative career during the med school education. It's definitely helps with changing the mind-set that some students go into med school with and some older physicians have that we are supposed to save everyone irrespective of the cost to the patient.

 

[Seaglass]

I would agree that a mandatory palliative care rotation is unusual but at Penn State everyone has some exposure to palliative care. We do have a palliative care elective and palliative care is dealt with as an individual part of our curriculum during the first two years of school. Overall I would say few students take advantage of the elective. I haven't taken the elective but over the last 1.5 years many of my patients have become palliative care patients and I have been involved in the specialty in that way.

Casey

 

[freelancewriter]

Thanks for the info. Good to hear that there is some exposure.