Cultivate a Compassionate Presence at the Bedside: An Aging and End-of-Life Care Practicum

Catalog description

This is a Community Engaged Learning Course for undergraduate students. This course is designed to prepare students to critically examine values, attitudes, and contexts that govern perspectives toward and engagement of patients within the context of aging and end of life. The course prepares students to responsibly and reflectively interact with aging, seriously ill and dying patients in a mentored setting. Using a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual-cultural framework, students learn about the history, evolution, principles and practice of geriatrics and palliative care. Students will be exposed to the challenges faced by patients from diverse backgrounds and their caregivers. The class has a strong practicum aspect by which students will be trained to cultivate a compassionate and healing presence at the bedside of the patient. After completing formal volunteer training, each student will be assigned a small panel of patients. Students will work with an inter-disciplinary team, conduct regular visits with the patients in their panel. The patients may be living at their homes or in a group home setting. Through mentored fieldwork, students will learn the basic competencies of communicating with older adults from diverse backgrounds in a respectful and compassionate manner. Students will be taught to discuss their panel of patients in class every week using the standard medical clinical rounds approach. Weekly assignments will help students reflect on their interactions with the patients and lessons they learned. Our goal is to train future leaders in the fields of healthcare, law, sociology, public policy, and humanities in the vital area of aging and end-of-life care for diverse Americans.Please note: This IntroSem is a Cardinal Course. Students who enroll in MED 51Q will be working directly with patients. As a prerequisite for patient-care, all students (a) must complete…