Learning About Grief, Death, and Dying During Medical Education: Thoughts, Rituals, and Rites of Passage

摘要

I remember well my first hands-on experience with death and grief during my medical education. I was a third-year medical student on my first clinical rotation. It was late at night, and a friend (another third-year medical student) and I had been assigned to help with admitting patients in an emergency room. We were approached by a nurse who said he needed us to deal with a difficult situation that he thought would teach us a lot. He apologized that he was too busy to help us. He was correct in that what unfolded that night was an experience that I will always carry with me. My friend and I were asked to go to the morgue to prepare a young man's body quickly for viewing by his wife. He had died on the table during a thoracic surgery. We were told the couple lived in another country, and that the family could not afford to fly his body home or have a funeral. This was going to be her last image of him. The rest of the family was 600 miles away. She was nine months pregnant with their first child.