Protected: Resources for Medical Students

Welcome to your palliative medicine placement with Rowcroft and Torbay Hospital Palliative care teams. 

Whatever field of medicine you chose in the future, you will be looking after people coming towards the end of their lives as a foundation doctor and possibly in later years. We hope that this placement will help prepare you for this.

We recognise that some of you may feel a little apprehensive about this placement and speaking to patients who are very unwell. Be reassured this is not unusual, and we hope that your experiences over the two weeks will help you start to feel more confident with this.

You will be mostly accompanying a member of the team, and if speaking to a patient alone it will usually be someone who has come to terms with their illness and feels able to speak about it.

This is not to say that you might not find some situations challenging, we cannot always predict how something might make us feel. Acknowledging when this is the case is important and professionally appropriate; if needed please excuse yourself from a situation and talk to one of the team.

We want you to get the most out of your time here so please ask the medical team any questions you may have.