A Memorial Service to Provide Reflection on Patient Death During Residency

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Patient death can be emotionally and psychologically stressful for clinicians, particularly clinicians in training.OBJECTIVE: We describe an annual memorial service as a novel approach to help internal medicine residents cope with and reflect on the experiences of patient death.METHODS: We created a memorial service in 2010 for patients who had died under the care of the internal medicine residents in our institution. Residents, medical students, and medicine faculty attended the 1-hour service. The memorial service was repeated in 2011, and a 10-question survey was sent to evaluate its impact.RESULTS: Twenty-two participants in either the 2010 or 2011 memorial service responded to the survey. Most of the respondents thought that reflection on patient death was important (95%) and that the memorial service was helpful in facilitating such reflection and bringing closure (95%).CONCLUSIONS: An annual memorial service helps trainees cope with the emotional impact of patient death. It can be easily adopted by other residency programs. The long-term impact of this experience on trainees' well-being and professional development is unknown.