Spiritual and emotional care is an important part of the person, especially in situations such as changes in health or a community coping with a pandemic. However, nurses report scarce university training in this area of care. The aim of the study is to define a catalogue of learning outcomes for spiritual and emotional care for undergraduate nurses. The design used a mixed method for the development and validation of learning outcomes. The first phase designs the catalogue of learning outcomes through a coordinating group and uses a bibliographic search and nursing legislation. The second phase validates the proposal through a group of experts, with a questionnaire using the modified Delphi technique in two rounds. The initial proposal was 75 learning outcomes, of which 17 were eliminated, 36 changed their wording and the experts proposed 7 new ones. The experts validated 65 learning outcomes: 14 for Assessment and diagnosis; 5 for Planning; 17 for Intervention; 4 for Evaluation and quality; 8 for Communication and interpersonal relationship and 17 for Knowledge and intrapersonal development. In conclusion, the academic curriculum can include these learning outcomes to help undergraduate nurses in the process of acquiring knowledge, skills and attitudes in spiritual and emotional care.

BackgroundMedical degree students often express great satisfaction toward their mentoring experience and share the impression that it has contributed significantly to their personal and professional development. Mentoring can contribute to a more comprehensive and integral preparation of the student for professional life, promoting critical reflection, but studies are needed which focus on effectiveness in achieving educational objectives by means of an appropriate methodology.MethodsThis pilot study aims to evaluate the formative impact on students' attitudes towards suffering and death and their perception of the role of mentors in an innovative mentoring program for undergraduate students through a quasi-experimental design.Between October 2019 and March 2020, 2nd-year medical students were invited to participate in a mentoring program made up of 5 mentors, randomly assigned to each student by Microsoft Excel's randomization function. A validated and adapted scale was used to measure students' perception of their mentors (CECA Scale) and the mentoring program, while another two validated scales were used to measure attitudes toward suffering (Brief Humanising Scale) and death (Bugen Scale).ResultsOf the 109 students invited to participate (79% female and 21% male), 20 agreed to participate in the intervention group and 24 in the control group. CECA was scored with medians of 6 (the highest score). The Brief Humanising Scale returned no statistically significant differences between the groups. The Bugen Scale showed significant differences after intervention in 80% of the items directly related to the educational objectives. ConclusionsStudents' perception of mentors and mentoring has been optimal. Students' attitude toward suffering was not improved, although attitudes toward death were. Long-term, mixed studies are needed to obtain a higher degree of evidence.