The benefits of rotating through palliative care: A qualitative study.

Purpose: This is a qualitative study of written reflection projects by medical learners who completed a clinical rotation in Palliative Care (PC) at an academic tertiary care center.

Methods: Upon completing their rotation in PC, medical learners were asked to complete an open-ended reflection project that captured their overall impressions of this training and experience. Fourteen reflections were coded and analyzed.

Results: Upon analyzing the reflections, 5 main themes emerged. The first theme is that this rotation helped the learners become more empathetic and compassionate towards patients and their families. Second, the learners were able to recognize the humanity in their patients, regardless of their medical condition. Third, each of the learners in this study had meaningful interactions with numerous patients and really felt that they played a supportive and important role in the death of patients with whom they were working. Fourth, this experience challenged the learners to think and act in ways that they have not been taught in medical school. Lastly, the learners experienced a sense of transformation and a new-found appreciation for all of the emotions involved with working with dying patients.

Conclusions: Rotating through PC and reflecting upon that experience can be very meaningful for medical learners who have not worked much with dying patients and their families.