Dealing with Death: Medical Students' Experiences with Patient Loss

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Current research on medical students' death experiences is either outdated or produces conflicting results. This research aims to address these issues by analyzing in-depth interviews in order to explore how medical students view and cope view death. The sample consists of twenty third and fourth year students attending a large Midwestern medical school. Grounded theory analyses techniques of line-by-line coding were used to analysis the interviews. The study revealed that students predominantly cope with patient death by talking and that contrary to much of the findings of previous research concerning medical socialization and physicians, students do not always view death as a failure. Beyond the students' death experiences, the study also captured students' perceptions and reactions towards various socialization stages in their medical careers, such as gross anatomy lab. Student beliefs as to what constitutes a good and bad death are also explored as well as their attitudes towards physician assisted suicide. Although these findings are not generalizable to any medical student population, they do provide important qualitative information as to how medical students experience and cope with death

A Relevant Pedagogy: Outcomes from a High School Sociology Research Practicum

Recently, there has been a growing interest in teaching sociology to high school students. Yet, unlike other academic fields that are well established in high school curricula, there are few well-known models of how to expose high schoolers to sociology. In this article, we assess one project designed to engage high school students with their sociological imagination through research and writing. In this project, students enrolled in a high school honors sociology course were paired with graduate student mentors at the [University] who offered guidance at each stage of the research process. Our assessment of this project highlights one model for high-school university collaboration while also illustrating the benefits of practicum-based independent research projects in addressing the needs of Latina/o high school students. Through interviews with students who have previously participated in the project, we demonstrate how this particular program developed hard and soft skills, increased students’ academic confidence, and fostered critical thinking by encouraging students to analyze issues pertinent to their own community

"The Unexamined Unit is Not Worth Running": A Critical Analysis of the Illinois Guardianship and Advocacy Commission

This is a qualitative study that used organization theory to analyze the institutional logics that various healthcare facilities and healthcare providers use when being investigated by on Illinois state advocacy agency that mobilizes the Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Code to protect the rights of those with psychiatric, intellectual and developmental disabilities. For this study, I analyzed 430 publicly available investigation reports published by the Human Rights Authority division of the Illinois Guardianship and Advocacy Commission. These reports are summaries of the Human Rights Authority’s investigations into facilities and different service providers who violated the state law—the Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Code. I used grounded theory and a critical content analysis of the investigation reports as well as facilities public responses to the Human Rights Authority’s findings to uncover the institutional logics of the hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities investigated. I began with open coding and then used thematic coding and magnitude coding to analyze the data. During this process, the institutional logics that the Human Rights Authority division of the Illinois Guardianship and Advocacy Commission also became evident. My findings indicate that various healthcare facilities and providers employ different institutional logics that are sometimes, but not always, at odds with the logics used by the Human Rights Authority. Also, I find that the Mental Health and Disabilities Code is a law that is not static. Instead, the investigations conducted by the Human Rights Authority and the conflicting institutional logics held by facilities lead to a dynamic, fluid process during which the state Code is interpreted differently by different social actors. Furthermore, I found that in some instances chemical restraint and physical restraints were used by facility to staff to control patients who were not a danger to themselves or others. I argue this amount to a form of violence in which patients are stripped of their bodily autonomy and self-determination, which is similar to previous research that found some patients experiences “sanctuary harm” in psychiatric hospitals