Moral Distress Amongst American Physician Trainees Regarding Futile Treatments at the End of Life: A Qualitative Study.

BACKGROUND: Ethical challenges are common in end of life care; the uncertainty of prognosis and the ethically permissible boundaries of treatment create confusion and conflict about the balance between benefits and burdens experienced by patients. OBJECTIVE: We asked physician trainees in internal medicine how they reacted and responded to ethical challenges arising in the context of perceived futile treatments at the end of life and how these challenges contribute to moral distress. DESIGN: Semi-structured in-depth qualitative interviews. PARTICIPANTS: Twenty-two internal medicine residents and fellows across three American academic medical centers. APPROACH: This study uses systematic qualitative methods of data gathering, analysis and interpretation. KEY RESULTS: Physician trainees experienced significant moral distress when they felt obligated to provide treatments at or near the end of life that they believed to be futile. Some trainees developed detached and dehumanizing attitudes towards patients as a coping mechanism, which may contribute to a loss of empathy. Successful coping strategies included formal and informal conversations with colleagues and superiors about the emotional and ethical challenges of providing care at the end of life. CONCLUSIONS: Moral distress amongst physician trainees may occur when they feel obligated to provide treatments at the end of life that they believe to be futile or harmful.This study was funded by the Health Resources and Service Administration T32 HP10025-20 Training Grant, the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, Society of General Internal Medicine Founders Grant, and the Ho-Chiang Palliative Care Research Fellowship at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11606-015-3505-

Exploiting the power of information in medical education.

The explosion of medical information demands a thorough reconsideration of medical education, including what we teach and assess, how we educate, and whom we educate. Physicians of the future will need to be self-aware, self-directed, resource-effective team players who can synthesize and apply summarized information and communicate clearly. Training in metacognition, data science, informatics, and artificial intelligence is needed. Education programs must shift focus from content delivery to providing students explicit scaffolding for future learning, such as the Master Adaptive Learner model. Additionally, educators should leverage informatics to improve the process of education and foster individualized, precision education. Finally, attributes of the successful physician of the future should inform adjustments in recruitment and admissions processes. This paper explores how member schools of the American Medical Association Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium adjusted all aspects of educational programming in acknowledgment of the rapid expansion of information