A memorial service to provide reflection on patient death during residency

Patient death can be emotionally and psychologically stressful for clinicians, particularly clinicians in training.

We describe an annual memorial service as a novel approach to help internal medicine residents cope with and reflect on the experiences of patient death.

We created a memorial service in 2010 for patients who had died under the care of the internal medicine residents in our institution. Residents, medical students, and medicine faculty attended the 1-hour service. The memorial service was repeated in 2011, and a 10-question survey was sent to evaluate its impact.

Twenty-two participants in either the 2010 or 2011 memorial service responded to the survey. Most of the respondents thought that reflection on patient death was important (95%) and that the memorial service was helpful in facilitating such reflection and bringing closure (95%).

An annual memorial service helps trainees cope with the emotional impact of patient death. It can be easily adopted by other residency programs. The long-term impact of this experience on trainees' well-being and professional development is unknown.