Teaching Psychiatry in the Context of Dying and Death
DAVID BARTON M.D.1
1 Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tenn. 37232
Instruction in dying and death can be profitably included in the psychiatry curriculum. Through the use of this subject as a teaching focus, improved methods of psychosocial care are fostered and psychiatric principles and phenomena involving the patient and his interpersonal and sociocultural environment emerge in sharp relief. Also, students learn that the problems of dying and death are part of the problems of living.
