Sounds like a great new initiative to put humanism back in health care… right up to the point where student doctors sit in the waiting room with their patients. Surely, this is not the best use of the time of an extremely busy med student?

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (AP) — Carolyn Casey's pager jolted her awake in wee hours of the morning: One of the Harvard medical student's patients had checked into the hospital and needed a Caesarean section. Casey rushed off, arriving just in time to help deliver her first baby.

Later, Casey visited the mother, Camila Santans, newborn Matthew and other family members in their room at The Cambridge Hospital, talking with them about breast-feeding and the gestational diabetes that had complicated the pregnancy. In the coming weeks, Casey will accompany Santans to follow-up appointments and checkups with Matthew's pediatrician.

It's all the kind of attentive, hands-on experience many assume is typical in a doctor's training. In fact, it's exceedingly rare.

At Harvard Medical School, as elsewhere, most students will see a dozen births or more during a three-week obstetrics rotation, but they rarely will meet a mother before she arrives at the hospital, or see her again once she leaves. On other rotations, they may see acutely ill cancer patients, but they may not be there to break the news, or follow them and their illnesses over a course of chemotherapy.

If the patients have specialist appointments, the students accompany them, even sitting with them in the waiting room. If they need surgery, students observe and assist. In some cases, they visit patients at home. And if patients die, as has already happened in the early months of the program, students will be there for that, too.

[1] Read more at CNN.com - Hands-on training for med students - Sep 27, 2004