'Death Rounds' help students cope

 Death Rounds’ are a useful way of helping neurology residents deal with the emotional issues surrounding death, as well as helping them learn basic end-of-life care, suggests new research.

Attempting to address a finding that neurology residents are often unprepared to care for dying patients, neurologists in a US teaching hospital introduced ‘Death Rounds’: informal clinical case discussions devoted to residents’ responses to, and experiences with, death of patients.

“Death Rounds typically consists of three to five case discussions among 10 to 15 team members, including medicine interns, neurology residents, and attendings,” the study authors wrote in the Archives of Neurology.

“The facilitator first reads aloud the names of all patients who died on the inpatient service during the preceding month and residents choose to discuss cases they found particularly memorable.”

The team was encouraged the details of quality of the dying process rather than on medical aspects of the deaths and the facilitator urged them to view the dying process as a natural part of care, not as a reason to search for errors.

Seventeen of the 26 residents (65%) said the Death Rounds helped them cope with dying patients and 18 (69%) said they helped educate them about end-of-life care.