Each year, a group of medical students at the USA College of Medicine take a national message about compassion in healthcare and drive it home with a week’s worth of special activities.
Solidarity Week for Compassionate Patient Care, set for Feb. 14-18, is being organized by members of the USA Chapter of the Arnold P. Gold Humanism in Medicine Honor Society (GHHS). Activities in previous years have ranged from distributing painted “kindness” rocks to creating posters for patients and physicians to encourage meaningful conversations.
“We want to ensure that compassion is always at the center of the high-quality care we provide our patients and community,” said T.J. Hundley, M.D., F.A.C.P., associate dean for medical education and a chapter adviser.
The national Gold Humanism Honor Society established National Solidarity Day for Compassionate Patient Care in 2011 to highlight the nationwide movement promoting provider-patient relationships based on caring, personalization and mutual respect. In 2013 and 2014, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution recognizing Solidarity Day on the national calendar, and the day was expanded to become Solidarity Week in 2016.
The GHHS is named for the late pediatric neurologist Arnold P. Gold, M.D., who co-founded the Arnold P. Gold Foundation. Gold, who died in 2018, championed the importance of empathy and compassion in patient care, and inspired generations of doctors to connect with the patients they treated.
Follow Solidarity Week activities on social media and tag your posts using the hashtag #solidarityweek. Find the USA College of Medicine on Facebook at @usacollegeofmed.
