Mission

CARE-7 Mission

To prepare all medical students, regardless of future specialty, to care for people with serious illness in a multidisciplinary team through simulation and experiential sessions that foster lifelong learning of empathic patient- and family-centered communication skills, holistic symptom management, and support.


The CARE-7 Curriculum emphasizes the importance of primary PC skills for all physicians, regardless of specialty, with the conviction that good PC skills make for better physicians and better patient care. CARE-7 also primes future physicians for the lifelong learning of these skills, particularly communication. Studies show that physician communication does not reliably improve over time without opportunities for deliberate practice, coaching, and feedback. Of course, all students will not graduate from medical school as expert communicators, in part due to lack of sufficient opportunities to break serious news or run complex family meetings. We hope, however, that CARE-7 will incline students toward growth in this area and encourage them to continually analyze their own practice as they encounter more skill-building opportunities in residency and beyond. The same growth-oriented mindset will undoubtedly help them in other areas of their medical practice.

Goals & Objectives

The seven overarching goals of the CARE-7 Curriculum are broken into 14 specific objectives based on PC competencies defined in the U.S. and Canada. The objectives correspond with LCME standards and Perelman School of Medicine’s overall objectives.

 

Goal 1:  Caring for patients throughout their disease process through knowledge of specialist palliative and hospice care.

  • Defines the philosophy and role of palliative care across the life cycle and differentiates hospice from palliative care.
  • Describes the rationale behind the interdisciplinary nature of the palliative care team and describes the roles of various team members.
  • Describes disease trajectories for common serious illnesses.

 

Goal 2:  Effective communication that incorporates the patient’s values, cultural context, and goals.

  • Explores patient and family understanding of illness, goals, values, and cultural beliefs and practices that inform the plan of care. 
  • Identifies and responds to emotion in patients and families facing serious illness.
  • Demonstrates patient-centered communication techniques when giving bad news and discussing medical decisions.

 

Goal 3:  Consideration of psychosocial and spiritual distress and bereavement in the care of seriously ill patients and their families. 

  • Identifies grief and psychosocial distress in patients and families.
  • Identifies spiritual and existential suffering in patients and families.

 

Goal 4:  Connecting with one’s own emotional response to patients with serious illness.

  • Reflects on personal emotional reactions to encountering patients with serious illness.

 

Goal 5:  Comprehensive pain management for patients with serious illness.

  • Describes an approach to pain management in serious illness, including knowledge about opioid initiation and titration.
  • Assesses pain systematically and distinguishes nociceptive from neuropathic pain.

 

Goal 6:  Providing comfort through excellent symptom management.

  • Describes an approach to the evaluation and management of common non-pain symptoms such as constipation and nausea.

 

Goal 7:  Care of the patient at the end of life.

  • Identifies common signs of the dying process and describes treatments for common symptoms at the end of life.
  • Describes tasks prior to and after a patient dies, including rationale behind medical decision-making, anticipatory guidance, death pronouncement, and family notification.