“During training, doctors typically focus on curing illness,” says Dr. Ungerleider (Shoshana). “We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how best to care for patients who have end-stage chronic illness, or something terminal like cancer. Palliative medicine teaches us how to offer quality care based on how patients want to live the rest of their lives.” Mindful of how challenging end-of-life and chronic disease care can be to the health of the physicians themselves, the program also provides physician wellness training. “We are teaching residents a set of skills that will allow them to have these meaningful and necessary conversations with their patients,” says Monica Rosenthal, M.D., director of CPMC’s Palliative Care Education Program. “But practicing palliative medicine can be very stressful, so we also teach them how to take care of their own health.”
Thanks to a clear vision and a generous seed gift from Shoshana Ungerleider, M.D. (who did her internal medicine residency at CPMC) and her father Steven Ungerleider, Ph.D., the Medical Center has developed an innovative curriculum to educate medical residents and interns about palliative medicine.
Full article can be found here: Generous Gift to Educate Young Physicians