Dealing with Death: Medical Students' Experiences with Patient Loss

Abstract

Current research on medical students' death experiences is either outdated or produces conflicting results. This research aims to address these issues by analyzing in-depth interviews in order to explore how medical students view and cope view death. The sample consists of twenty third and fourth year students attending a large Midwestern medical school. Grounded theory analyses techniques of line-by-line coding were used to analysis the interviews. The study revealed that students predominantly cope with patient death by talking and that contrary to much of the findings of previous research concerning medical socialization and physicians, students do not always view death as a failure. Beyond the students' death experiences, the study also captured students' perceptions and reactions towards various socialization stages in their medical careers, such as gross anatomy lab. Student beliefs as to what constitutes a good and bad death are also explored as well as their attitudes towards physician assisted suicide. Although these findings are not generalizable to any medical student population, they do provide important qualitative information as to how medical students experience and cope with death.