‘Press Herald’ features UNE’s Hospice Immersion Project
On February 28, 2015, the Portland Press Herald featured an article about the College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Hospice Immersion Project, a pilot project offering second-year medical students a unique experience of living and working at Gosnell Memorial Hospice House for terminally ill patients.
Kelly McVan and Caitlin Farrell spent two days at Gosnell House in January, following nurses and doctors on their rounds, taking notes about what they experienced, getting to know patients and their families and learning how to care for people as they approach death.
Doug Wood, D.O., Ph.D., FACOI, dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine (COM), remarked, "It’s a marvelous thing to have students involved in this kind of educational adventure. Dying is part of the living experience, yet I think these students learned more in 48 hours than most students do throughout medical school and residency." Wood noted that UNE hopes to expand the Hospice Immersion Project and to eventually include other hospice providers.
Marilyn Gugliucci, Ph.D., director of Geriatrics Education and Research in COM, coordinated the project. She and two medical students, Andrea Gaul and Himanshu Malhotra, who previously participated in the immersion, co-authored an article about the project, which will be published soon in a special issue of the Journal of International Clinical Medicine that will focus on palliative and hospice care. In the article, Gugliucci discusses how rare it is for traditional medical schools to offer firsthand experience in a hospice setting despite the increasing demand for hospice care and a growing senior population in the United States.