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The Buried Curriculum
Author(s) -
Farris Grace
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
hastings center report
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.515
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1552-146X
pISSN - 0093-0334
DOI - 10.1002/hast.423
Subject(s) - curriculum , medical school , medical education , hidden curriculum , psychology , medicine , pedagogy
“Your patient just died; do you mind pronouncing her?” It was six‐thirty in the morning three months after I had graduated from medical school, and I had just relieved the covering nighttime intern. I must have looked horrified. Pronouncing a death is one of the last things we do for a patient, but it's a ritual that doctors learn outside of formal training. If, as the data suggests, young physicians do not have any training on death pronouncement in medical school and do not receive any direct observation from faculty during their postgraduate years, pronouncing a death remains deeply buried in the informal curriculum, or “hidden curriculum,” a term that has been used to describe the massive body of tacit cultural education that takes place in medical school and residency .