"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.

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.