Death Hard Even for Doctors: Most Medical Schools Offering End-of-Life Care Classes for Students

Columbus Dispatch

12/28/07

Death is part of life, as natural as breathing. But even for doctors who deal with death all the time, it's an uncomfortable subject. Many physicians have a hard time dealing with a patient's impending death and tend to disappear after a terminal prognosis, said Ohio University psychologist Mark Shatz. Shatz, who teaches death and dying courses at the university's Zanesville campus, said doctors who vanish cheat their patients of an honest appraisal at the end of their lives. Jonathan Parsons, a pulmonologist and critical-care doctor who works in the intensive-care unit at Ohio State University Medical Center, said breaking bad news to patients was not well covered when he graduated from medical school eight years ago.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/faith_values/stories/2007/12/28/Death_notice.ART_ART_12-28-07_B7_K88SS32.html?sid=101