A lesson on life’s end: How one college class is rethinking doctor training

"The class, called Life at the End of Life, places students with medical aspirations — before they even apply to medical school — with patients at the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center (TCC), a nursing home in Harlem. The students enter the doors of the clinic knowing that their patients will not get better, and likely never leave. In an increasingly tech-enabled medical profession, where death is postponed as long as possible, the class challenges pre-med students to confront that ultimate reality, and to learn how to guide patients and their families through it. And along the way it’s challenging their field’s hidebound distinction between medicine and palliative care — between doing everything to keep someone alive, and helping them die with dignity."

A lesson on life’s end: How one college class is rethinking doctor training: