Participation by the family is optional, but allows the students to work through the almost insurmountable task for a modern doctor—honest conversation about death with a family. The students even call their donor body “their first patient.” In a profile of the program by the Wall Street Journal, first-year medical student Rania Kaoukis explained that “it would have been easier to think of the body as a number. But that isn’t what makes good doctors.”
