Coming to terms with grief and loss - Can skills for dealing with bereavement be learned?

"No matter what specialty you choose, in reality you lose every patient you ever have." This sober perspective, uttered by a long-time physician to hi s neophyte medical students, captures an existential fact about life and hu man frailty that most of us prefer to deny: Ultimately medical skill is lim ited, every relationship is finite, and each of us will die. So why, we mig ht reasonably wonder, are physicians taught so little about how to comfort the brokenhearted? Drs Zerbe and Steinberg provide ideas for becoming aware of and dealing openly with these difficult feelings and situations.