By SHANNON DAUGHTRY
As a second-year medical student at The University of Texas Medical Branch, Jacob Maher believes that over the years, medicine has lost sight of one of its most important qualities: healing.
“I think medicine is losing its healing presence and focusing more about curing a sickness,” Maher said.
Which is why the Richmond transplant enrolled in the medical branch’s Physician Healer track as a way to learn what Maher calls a very valuable skill.
The Physician Healer track began two years ago to help students focus on areas such as self-awareness, life balance, better communication techniques and practice being a healing presence for patients. The track is taught alongside other medical courses.
“Classic medical training has a history of teaching physicians to detach emotionally from their patients in order to be objective and make the appropriate intellectual decision,” said Dr. Cara Geary, professor of pediatrics at The University of Texas Medical Branch.
And while these training techniques are not new ideas in medical school, the medical branch’s Physician Healer track is unique in that it brings these ideals together into a six-month curriculum integrated into four years of medical school, Geary said.
Part of the class, which is made up of 26 second-year students, involves meeting with patients in chronic pain or minimal consciousness, she said. Other situations they’re put in include learning how to deliver bad news to patients.
“We really throw them into some charged situations of what it can be like to be a physician,” Geary said.
But this doesn’t mean turning medical students into hospice doctors, she said.
“We’re trying to give them some skills into what emotional resilience looks like,” Geary said.
And how to take care of themselves in the process, she said.
Objectivity and detachment may still be needed at times, but emotional distance has been proven to lead to burnout for doctors and may not be what a patient really needs, she said.
One thing students learned recently is how to deliver bad news to a patient, such as a terminal diagnosis or a major change in their lifestyle because of a sickness or some other sort of condition.
“It can be so highly emotional,” Maher said. “But it really is such a valuable skill.”
James Troung, who is in his third year of medical school, went through the classes last year as a way to make sure he wasn’t ever depersonalized from his patients.
“It was a really great way to be around like-minded people,” Troung said. “And someone to share these difficult experiences with.”
In the class, students are put into various scenarios with standardized patients where they get reactions and feedback from their other classmates as well as professors.
“We don’t expect them to be knowledgeable about these things, but we’re expecting them to bring humanness to their interaction,” Geary said.
The feedback they receive from the standardized patients, as well as their professors and classmates is invaluable in the learning experience, she said.
“Once you know something is needed, you can’t un-know that,” Geary sad. “This track helps students learn more deeply about their role as their patient’s doctor and to see what it is their patient really needs.”
Contact reporter Shannon Daughtry at 409-683-5337 or shannon.daughtry@galvnews.com.