Give Us 8 Weeks: Building a Palliative Care Pipeline for URiM Medical Students

• Published in: Journal of pain and symptom management 2024-05, Vol.67 (5), p.e585-e586
• Main Authors: Winawer-Wetzel, Sarah, Ganta, Niharika
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0885-3924
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2024.02.394

1. Participants will be able to self-report an understanding of the pressing issue of underrepresentation in the field of hospice and palliative medicine and the need to address it. 2. Participants will be able to self-report having a concrete, practical understanding of how to implement a similar program in their own institutions. There is an urgent need to diversify Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Hiring and recruitment efforts are important but insufficient to close the gap in representation. An immersive summer palliative care experience targeting pre-clerkship medical students is a replicable, scalable model that can meaningfully impact future diversity in the field. Patients from populations underrepresented in medicine (URiM) have less access to hospice and palliative care, less access to opioids, and fewer opportunities to engage in ACP conversations than their white counterparts. While the US population is becoming increasingly diverse, the field of medicine – including Hospice and Palliative Medicine (HPM) –does not reflect this. Recruitment efforts designed to increase diversity among attendings are important, but insufficient given the lack of diversity among fellowship-trained physicians. Increasing representation from URiM populations in HPM requires reaching future physicians in medical school. However, many undergraduate medical students have minimal or no exposure to HPM; an issue often exacerbated at schools with high populations of URiM students. Simply put, students from URiM backgrounds disproportionately miss the opportunity to explore HPM as a specialty. Ultimately, HPM programs who wish to have a more diverse workforce must commit to actively creating a larger pool of students and faculty who are interested in the field. At Penn, we designed a pre-clerkship internship designed to provide medical students from URiM backgrounds with a summer to learn about palliative care. Students participate in scholarship, shadow interdisciplinary clinicians, receive tailored didactics, and connect with mentors. Each student receives a financial stipend for the summer, as well as an additional stipend to attend the next year's Annual Assembly. The inaugural program in 2023 demonstrated that this program is feasible, replicable, and scalable to other institutions and disciplines. Student perspectives show that the program made a meaningful impact on their connection to palliative care and their likelihood of choosing palliative care as a future spe