Welcome back! For today's episode, Grace sits down with Dr. Erin Kelly, a fellow in Palliative and Hospice Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, to discuss surrogate decision making - what it is, how does it affect patient care, and how do doctors and surrogate decision makers work together to make the best decisions for patients when they can't communicate their desires themselves. We also finish the episode with a fantastic discussion about Palliative Medicine and why you should keep it on your radar if you're a medical student deciding on what specialty to go into. We hope you enjoy this episode! (And please excuse any recording errors!)

Michael sits down with John A. Di Camillo, PhD to discuss the philosophy of personalism, its history, his experience as a translator, and what personalism has to teach us about clinical medicine.  

Further reading: 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personalism/ 

https://dappledthings.org/2075/personalist-bioethics-a-translators-reflections/

Personalist Bioethics Amazon link

We're pleased to introduce “To the End: Topics in End of Life Care”, a mini-series that focuses on ethical questions surrounding the decisions we make at the end of life. In this episode, Grace, Heli, Mike, and Anthony discuss patient autonomy and informed consent as critical components of healthcare ethics and delivery with Dr. Diann Ecret, a nurse-bioethicist who obtained her PhD in healthcare ethics from Duquesne University. 

In this episode of After Class, Heli has a candid conversation about humility in medicine with Dr. Jeffrey Baliff. The word “humility” shares origins with “humane” and “humanity”. Genuine humility involves cultivating an attitude of respect towards every life. Here we discuss a unique take on personal humility and imposter syndrome and hear some inspiring advice for medical students.

In this episode, we are exploring rural medicine with Dr. Robert Motley. From the ethics of access to care to the challenges of recruiting physicians, we discuss both the progress of rural medicine and its future. 

Additional information:

TED Talk “Changing the World, Fast,” Dr. Sanjeev Arora (Project ECHO): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY5nlJxac0g Project ECHO: https://hsc.unm.edu/echo/

PA Rural Health Association: https://paruralhealth.org/ PA Community Health Centers Career Center: https://www.pachc.org/Career-Center

National Rural Association: Policy Documents page: https://www.ruralhealthweb.org/advocate/policy-documents Rural Health Information Hub: https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/ and https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/guides

Kaiser Family Foundation State Health Facts (interactive): https://www.kff.org/statedata/

What is the role of compassion in patient care? Who bears the burden of this responsibility? How does compassion affect physicians? Is compassion an antidote to burnout? 

We are exploring these questions and offering our personal opinions in this episode!