Grass Roots Health Podcast: Episode # 28 = Do Physician Assistant Students Receive Adequate End-of-Life Education? An Interview with Kelvin Freeman

We are born, live, get old, and then die. This is the natural cycle of life. One thing is certain, humans have a 100% mortality rate. 

Death is a rite of passage in which we all participate – as a family member, a health care provider, or as a patient.    

Healthcare providers often view death through a biomedical lens and define death as a physiological event. As a result, they often view death very narrowly as a medical failure. Therefore, healthcare providers are frequently the worst “death deniers” in American society.   

Instead of talking about death and dying openly and honestly and allowing their patients to prepare for their departure, many healthcare providers often put their patients on the “medical treadmill” of another surgery, another amputation, another round of chemotherapy, or more radiation. Such medical treatment is frequently futile and only serves to steal the patient’s quality of life at the end-of-life stage. 

In this episode, our host, Tim Jordan, talks to Kelvin Freeman about what he has learned via his research with program directors of accredited physician assistant training programs across the U.S.  

Do physician assistant students receive adequate end-of-life education during their training?   Listen and find out.  

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Resources for This Podcast: 

Detroit Michigan Health Department: https://detroitmi.gov/departments/detroit-health-department

Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the U.S. Department of Labor. Emergency Preparedness and Response. https://www.osha.gov/emergency-preparedness

Article: (2024). Applying a Health Equity Lens to Better Understand End-of-Life Prognostication.  https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/applying-health-equity-lens-better-understand-end-life-prognostication/2024-10

Blog (2023).  Adding Life to One’s Remaining Days.  https://1795group.com/adding-life-to-ones-remaining-days/

Article: (2021). The COVID-19 pandemic has changed dying and grief: Will there be a surge of complicated grief? Death Studies, 84-90;   https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07481187.2021.1929571

Article: (2020). COVID-19 brings a new urgency for advance care planning: Implications for death education.  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07481187.2020.1821262

Article: (2019). Dying Well-Informed: The Need for Better Clinical Education Surrounding Facilitating End-of-Life Conversations. Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6913833/#:~:text=Moreover%2C%2040%20percent%20of%20medical,informing%20patients%20about%20their%20prognoses

Letter to the Editor:  The Uphill Task of Improving End-of-Life Training in U.S. Internal Medicine Residency Programs (2019). https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/fulltext/2019/10000/the_uphill_task_of_improving_end_of_life_training.5.aspx

Article: (2017) Predicting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Advance Care Planning Using the Integrated Behavioral Model.  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0030222817691286?casa_token=ksd86v_2QwAAAAAA%3AS6NMzc4Ve_JdlusxbnlPdlYVy-Z4c9a6PtfgofOiAYP39LyxSh0A2eXiqWBjNfeg_NAG-HxhyWXo

Article: (2016). Teaching About Life and Living in Courses on Death and Dying. Death Studies. Written by Charles Corr.   https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0030222815575902?casa_token=yIb4TUwp3H8AAAAA%3A6CdzEs53Wn65ALnwonTDLydfKDV_HEuiJ4wNn7retxXyRrL1HKpVy8LloywVLzahA1_j18GJjbON

Podcast: Episode 7: Death and Dying from the Perspective of a Hospice Nurse – An Interview with Nurse Penny.   https://1795group.com/episode/episode-7-death-and-dying-from-the-perspective-of-a-hospice-nurse-an-interview-with-nurse-penny/

TV interview with Dr. Tim Jordan on bereavement and grief. https://youtu.be/a0QWYEmbw40

Blog: The Mountain