Training of palliative medicine fellows: a report from the field.

Background: The escalating demand for palliative care physicians has led to the proliferation of postgraduate fellowship programs to train physicians in the United States and Canada. There is currently little data regarding the extent to which clinical, research, educational or administrative skills and competencies have been incorporated into fellowship training.

Objective: The survey aims were to describe: (1) fellows' interests and relative priorities for receiving training in the clinical, educational, research, and administrative aspects of palliative medicine; (2) quantity of training received in each area; (3) fellows' satisfaction with the teaching received in each area; (4) post-fellowship employment experiences.

"This is just too awful; I just can't believe I experienced that...": medical students' reactions to their "most memorable" patient death.

Purpose: To examine medical students' emotional reactions to their "most memorable" patient death and the support they receive.

Method: In 2000-01, 65 third-year medical students at two Northeastern U.S.

There is hope for the future: national survey results reveal that geriatric medicine fellows are well-educated in end-of-life care.

Objectives: To assess the status of geriatric medicine (GM) fellows' training experiences in end-of-life care via self-report.

Design: Anonymous surveys completed by mail, Web access, and telephone.

Setting: U.

The need for end-of-life care training in nephrology: national survey results of nephrology fellows.

Because of the high mortality rate of end-stage renal disease, nephrologists care for many dying patients. However, the education of nephrology fellows in palliative care has not been assessed. We surveyed second-year nephrology fellows to assess the quantity and quality of teaching they received in palliative medicine and also asked about their preparedness to manage patients at the end of life.

Symptom burden, quality of life, advance care planning and the potential value of palliative care in severely ill haemodialysis patients.

Background: There has been little research on the potential value of palliative care for dialysis patients. In this pilot study, we sought (i) to identify symptom burden, health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and advance directives in extremely ill haemodialysis patients to determine their suitability for palliative care and (ii) to determine the acceptability of palliative care to patients and nephrologists.

Methods: Nineteen haemodialysis patients with modified Charlson co-morbidity scores of > or =8 were recruited.

Air pollution, blood pressure, and their long-term associations with mortality.

This article addresses the importance of blood pressure as a covariate in studies of long-term associations between air quality and mortality. We focus on a cohort of about 50,000 U.S.