‘Sunday Rounds’ reinforce humanism in patient care

A simple greeting, smile and conversation is all it takes sometimes to change a patient’s stay at the hospital into a positive experience.

To help continue to educate future health care professionals about the importance of fulfilling the various needs of patients, the medical students of the UNMC Gold Humanism Honor Society (GHHS) chapter created “Sunday Rounds,” a new patient program.

“Sunday Rounds is a program designed to bring medical students and patients together to remind medical students of the human side of medicine and to help patients forget, if only for a moment, that they are in the hospital,” said Riley Machal, GHHS member and co-creator of the “Sunday Rounds” program.

The program began with patients on the fifth floor of Clarkson Tower and runs from August to April. Sunday Rounds will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. on the first and third Sunday of each month. Students are not a part of the treatment team, and are only present to provide companionship.

The nursing staff identifies patients in need of visitors (those whose family are far away and unable to visit or those who will be in the hospital for extended periods of time).

Then, first and second-year medical students are paired with third and fourth-year medical students to visit these patients. The students will have games, cards, and other materials available to facilitate student-patient interaction.

The GHHS faculty advisor Charity Evans, M.D., said if all goes well at this location, the hope is the program will spread to other units.

“I’m very proud of our medical students — their kindness and creativity never cease to amaze me,” Dr. Evans said. “We believe this program will assist medical students in honing their bedside skills and will provide patients with compassion and companionship.”