Italian Italian

Abstract

In this paper we reflect on medical knowledge and professional identity change that may occur when physicians start training in palliative care (PC). Our reflections are based on a secondary analysis of data collected in a qualitative study on the development of competence in PC, which involved all the professionals (n=30) who in 2014-2015 attended a master program in PC offered by the University of Milan (Italy). They were involved in three focus group (FG), at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the training. We focus on FGs conducted with physicians (N=10) to reflect on the impact of PC training on their knowledge and identity. Physicians claimed to have a therapeutic role in the CP, even though they realized from the beginning of the Master that their role had to move from caring dimension – in biomedical sense – into taking care  one referring to patients / family members. The participants affirmed that they had to “undress” languages and philosophies that characterized their previous education, in order to acquire the skill to confront suffering. Even if, at the beginning of the Master, the encounter with death and suffering seems to put.

Even if encountering death and grief, at the beginning of the Master, seems to intensely challenge medical knowledge and role, later, physicians seem to enlarge their idea of competence and wisdom arises from coming to terms with human finitude. Entering in the context of PC makes the doctors confront not only with patients’ finitude, but also with their own sense of finitude. Therefore, the process of ????? ????? seems put in place here, which allows the construction of a new idea of medical knowledge that we called “sapience”. The latter can not be intended as a simple transmission/acquisition of knowledge, but has been described as a process of becoming. In conclusion, we reflect on the importance of making medical students confront with finitude, and therefore on the value of introducing PC also in undergraduate training, in order to enlarge medical students’ knowledge and identity.