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Six students from the University of New England’s College of Osteopathic Medicine recently published their research after participating in groundbreaking hospice and nursing home immersion projects spearheaded by Marilyn R. Gugliucci, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Geriatrics Medicine. All students who conduct this qualitative ethnographic research are required to write journals during the three phases of the research. To date, 28 students have been immersed in the Hospice Home. Gugliucci implemented this project in December 2014 and she has been immersing students each month during the academic year.  

Four of the students worked with Gugliucci to publish two articles on the ɫ����Ƶ COM 48 Hour Hospice Home Immersion Project. Natasha Tobarran (COM, ’17) and Taylor Byrne (COM, ‘17) were admitted into the Gosnell Memorial Hospice Home in Scarborough, Maine in April of 2015. The accounts of their experiences and caring for primarily older adults at the end of life was published in the Journal of Gerontology and Geriatric Research in an article titled, “Accelerated Medical Education: Impact of a 48 Hour Hospice Home Immersion.”

Caitlin Farrell (COM, ’17) and Jenifer Kodela, (COM, ’17) were also immersed in the hospice home for 48 hours, but at different times and with different partners. Farrell was immersed in February 2015 and Kodela was immersed in July 2015. They compared their data, which is in the form of journals that they each wrote, and identified results that were relational. Their article was published in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine.

Two ɫ����Ƶ COM students participated in the ɫ����ƵCOM Learning by Living Nursing Home Immersion Project. They were “admitted” into two different nursing homes in two states during the summer of 2015. Ianna Hondros-MaCarthy (COM, ’18) Philip Barber (COM, ’18) and Gugliucci published an article in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine, spring 2016. For this research project, the students were admitted for 11 days into their respective nursing homes, complete with a diagnosis and standard procedures of care. Barber lived in a dementia unit at the nursing home. The data outcomes for both students highlighted the importance of empathy in medical care, which became the focus of their published article titled, “Learning by Living: Empathy Learned through an Extended Medical Education Immersion Project.”

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