VNR: Preparing medical students to cope with death

Medical students suiting up for surgery during training at JABSOM.

Link to video and sound (details below):
https://spaces.hightail.com/space/fSYufdvrck 

Doctors have the highest suicide rates among any profession, with—on average—one physician suicide per day, according to a report by the American Psychiatry Association in 2018.

It’s one reason that the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) stresses throughout its curriculum that students need to take care of their mental and physical health.

In the early years, breaks between particularly stressful periods of study are relieved by “MD Student Olympics,” where the future physicians exhaust themselves in contests including soccer, tug of war and fun relay races. Before the students head to Hawaiʻi’s major hospitals to begin rotating through clinical wards, shadowing faculty and other practicing physicians, the mental health discussions take a more serious turn.

As the students practice life-saving procedures learned during their first two years, they also engage in frank discussions about the part of life—death—where future doctors’ healing skills need to focus on the living: the patients’ families and the healers themselves.

“There’s just so many things that happen (in medicine), it can be very overwhelming,” said Randi Olds, co-chief resident of UH Internal Medicine. “Now all of a sudden, something happens and despite all of your aggressive efforts and training, they pass away or they don’t make it. Going through that emotion can be very difficult I think, not only on residents and med students but on everyone.”

Olds, of Kauaʻi, earned her MD from JABSOM in 2016, and still remembers the first time she witnessed death as a medical student.

“I remember my first death and it was really difficult for me. So, I think this is important for them to kind of just get some kind of idea about what to expect or at least know how to cope with things so that they feel that they’re not alone,” said Olds.

Olds said JABSOM and its various clinical training departments make psychiatrists and psychologists available for the medical students and MD trainees and encourages them to talk over difficult emotional situations with each other, with their peers and instructors and to not be afraid to seek help.

It is an important lesson, because as healers, doctors are the ones patient families will often need to turn to first when a loved one passes away.

VIDEO:

BROLL: (1 minute, 20 seconds)

0:00-00:04, 1 clips: MD students playing soccer

0:05-00:10 1 clip: tug of war

00:11-00:28 2 clips: relay race

00:29-1:40 9 clips: students training at JABSOM

1:41-2:20 6 clips: MD students and residents in the hospital

SOUND:

00:00-03:02

Randi Olds, Co-Chief Resident of UH Internal Medicine

“There’s just so many things that happen (in medicine), it can be very overwhelming.” (3 seconds)

 
03:02-18:24

Olds

“Now all of a sudden, something happens and despite all of your aggressive efforts and training, they pass away or they don’t make it. Going through that emotion can be very difficult I think, not only on residents and med students but on everyone.” (15 seconds)

19:04-31:21

Olds

“I remember my first death and it was really difficult for me. So, I think this is important for them to kind of just get some kind of idea about what to expect or at least know how to cope with things so that they feel that they’re not alone.” (12 seconds)

For more information, visit: https://jabsom.hawaii.edu/coping-with-death-when-a-doctors-healing-needs-to