July 28, 2025

Ep. 511 Being with Dying: Teaching Death to Medical Students with Kevin Dieter MD

1 hour 3 minutes

Learn about innovative educational programs for medical students and the impact they are having.

My special guest Dr. Kevin Dieter is a family medicine and hospice and palliative care physician who helped to develop the nationally recognized palliative care curriculum at Northeast Ohio Medical University. He created a virtual learning module called “Being with Dying” for medical and pharmacy students to teach them what they need to know to be at the bedside of a dying patient. He discusses the course he offers, including training healthcare providers. Learn more from his website:

walking-home.com

Watch on YouTube

Get the booklet: Facing Death with Grace

Listen here:

This episode includes:

How Kevin first learned about end-of-life care from his patient “Mary”

How Kevin went from being a family doctor to a hospice doctor

The value of exposing medical students to dying patients

3 Pillars of wisdom:

dying are our teachers both directly and indirectly

we are the medicine for patients in our presence

dying is more than a medical event

How he helped initiate a learning experience called “The Hospice Patient as Teacher” for 3rd year medical students

How patients don’t want their physician to “run away” when they are dying

The power of home visits for patients

What “Being with Dying” consists of

Why this course can be replicated by other programs

Why he no longer talks about “good” or “bad” deaths

How Kevin became an Anam Cara

Links mentioned in this episode:

Sacred Art of Living Program

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Conversations on Death with ChatGPT – Audiobook here; Print Book here

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