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for Students

PathosConnections

Overview

 

PathosConnections is a two-pronged educational program currently in initially stages of development. The program will provide the interconnections and resources for participating medical students, residents, and physicians to further promote personalism in clinical care. The two components of PathosConnections include:

1. An active professional role-modeling program which offers opportunities for medical students and young physicians to have formative mentorship by physicians esteemed for their personalism in medical care.
2. An online networking forum to further expand the vision of promoting personalism in medicine by connecting students and young physicians with mentor physicians identified by the Pathos Project. This online forum will serve as a catalyst though connecting exceptional professional role-models and their apprentices.
   

 

Background and Vision

 

To respond to the scarcity of meaningful and personable clinical interactions, the Pathos Project coalesced a select group of physicians and scholars.   The purpose of our meetings was to delineate specific methods and efforts that could effectively contribute to reform the culture of medicine, especially medical education, and infuse personalism into the care of patients, thus reinvigorating doctor-patient relationship. 

 

Below are the fruits of our discussions with our Advisory Council:

 

There have been recurrent, well-funded attempts to re-humanize medicine that have failed.   Previous programs emphasized curriculum development and lecture-based education reform rather than the immensely transformative nature of mentorship and personal interactions.   Furthermore, medicine is a living narrative, where particular tacit mannerisms, ethics, and perspectives are implicitly perpetuated through the culture.   Since the previous generation of caregivers teaches the next, effective programs must hone on these relational elements of medical instruction and formation.   When a medical student or young physician learns how to care for patients they observe their fellow residents and attendings, deciding which to emulate and which to ignore.

 

Therefore, mentorship is a key element in transforming the culture of medicine.  By identifying caregivers that model personalism in the doctor-patient relationship and highlighting their activity, future physicians will learn to be “good” physicians from “good” physicians.   However, such a statement does not presume that this mentorship will occur by an osmotic or implicit process.   Thus, there is a great need to interconnect model caregivers with interested apprentices in order to facilitate active professional role-modeling for medical students, nursing students, residents and in Continuing Medical Education (CME).

 

Purpose and Goals

 

The PathosConnections online forum will serve the following purposes:

 

1. Provide a means of connecting and networking our already existing database of over 1200 professionals (physicians, ethicists, scholars, medical students, and other healthcare professionals).
2. Allow members to display an online profile (similar to FaceBook/LinkedIn) to informally connect with like-minded caregivers and organically initiate local role-modeling programs.
3. Highlight and promote already existing mentorship initiatives oriented toward promoting personalism in medicine, including relevant conferences, debriefing sessions, and recent publications; in other words to build a coalition;
4. Create Groups to connect people in similar institutions, geographical areas, and medical specialties. Pertinent information and educational materials will be provided to respective groups.
5. Provide an online library to all members, which will serve as a database of articles, studies, and conference archives relevant to personalism in medicine.