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| Fourth-year medical students (l to r) Shu Yang, Melinda Palma and Waldo Zamor with the GHHS Tell Me More poster on National Solidarity Day for Compassionate Care. |
The inaugural members of the Gold Humanism Honor Society at UMass Medical School celebrated National Solidarity Day for Compassionate Care by participating in the Tell Me More project.
The medical students visited patients at the University campus of UMass Memorial Medical Center on Feb. 12 and asked a number of them to answer a few short questions about themselves. As a means of revealing their personal uniqueness to their care teams, their answers were posted above their beds, visible to everyone who enters their rooms. Patients were asked how their friends would describe them, what they like to do, and what about them others would find surprising.
One patient said, “Training dogs is my life.” Another said, “If I wasn’t in the hospital, I’d be building snowmen with my granddaughters.” Still another said, “We have dinner with my daughter and granddaughters every Sunday.” Another boasted, “I am the coolest of the cool.”
Fourth-year medical student Shu Yang was encouraged by the enthusiasm of the patients who were eager to share their stories.
“A lot of patients said we should do this more often and were excited to have their stories up on the walls,” Yang said.”
Members of the UMMS honor society also took the opportunity to educate the broader UMMS-UMass Memorial campus community about the importance of compassionate care by setting up an information poster in the hospital cafeteria during the busy lunch hour, where visitors could read some of the patient responses and the students could explain the initiative.
The Gold Humanism Honor Society recognizes students, residents and faculty who practice “patient-centered care by modeling the qualities of integrity, excellence, compassion, altruism, respect and empathy.” It is one of the signature programs of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, an international non-profit organization committed to fostering and maintaining a culture of compassion, caring and respect in health care.
More than 70 medical school chapters of the honor society took part in the Tell Me More initiative this year. Tell Me More was developed in 2014 by the chapter at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Gold Foundation this year encouraged chapters nationwide to adopt the initiative as a means of celebrating National Solidarity Day for Compassionate Care.
The Gold Foundation also designed the White Coat Ceremony, which has become an important and beloved ritual for first-year medical students and their families.
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