התערבות במשבר - סיכום תוצאות סבב קליני ייחודי

Introduction: Physicians encounter in their daily work in varied illnesses, often accompanied with an emotional crisis that engulfs both the patient and its' family. Research has shown that physicians find this part of their occupation extremely harsh, especially in the part of conveying to the patient the initial bad news about his condition. Most of the curriculums of medical schools that are published do not have any programs to train these expertises to medical students. The patient's rights act, and the need of patients today to be involved in their treatment has made it even more important to train would be physicians how to convey bad news. Methods: The faculty of health sciences at the Ben-Gurion University is amongst the pioneers in articulating a formal curriculum about how to convey bad news and crisis intervention. The clinical workshop "Crisis intervention" is aimed at 2nd year medical students, and has been taught in our school for the last 15 years, and confronts these issues head on. The course is conducted by an expert psychiatrist and an experienced social worker. The course is aimed at lending the students with theoretical background upon crisis and the emotional turmoil that medical emergencies cause, as well as to expose the students to real life crisis situations of patients and their families and expose them to optimal management of these situations. During the workshop, which is 4 days long, students learn how to convey bad news, as well as to understand its' impact upon patients and their families. In the workshop we put an emphasis upon the ethical and legal issues that evolve when caring for extremely ill patients. In the current article we unfold the techniques, theoretical and pedagogical issues of the workshop. Results: We used semi structured questionnaires to evaluate the course, and found this workshop has been considered by the students as an interesting and relevant course. Discussion: Using the results shown, as well as an oral after course debriefing with class representatives, we found that the involvement of the students in the different wards has exposed them to various ways of managing crisis. The close chaperoning of students by a physician attending as well as the wards' social worker has shown the students a good example of the involvement of staff in the emotional turmoil that a patient suffers from in the midst of his medical crisis. The learning process which is mainly experiential in nature, and which is enforced academically by the frontal lectures, as well as the small groups learning and class discussions, have enabled our students to meet and hopefully identify with a more humane perception of the physician, as one whose professionalism is measured not only by his clinical skills, but also by his communication skills.