These findings suggest that nurses' knowledge about palliative care can be improved by establishing specific palliative care units to focus on end-of-life care. This establishment requires incorporation of an end-of-life nursing education curriculum into undergraduate nursing studies.

Lack of education and experience, as well as cultural and professional limitations, may have contributed to the negative attitude toward some aspects of the care for people who are dying among the nurses surveyed. Creating a reflective narrative environment in which nurses can express their own feelings about death and dying seems to be a potentially effective approach to identify the factors influencing their interaction with the dying. Continuing education may be required for Iranian palliative care nurses in order to improve the patients quality of care at the end of life.

Aim:To compare the attitudes of Iranian and Swedish nursing students toward caring for dying persons.Materials and Methods:Their attitudes were measured with the Frommelt’s Attitude Toward Caring of the Dying and the Death Attitude Profile Revised.Results:The results indicated that the participating Iranian students were more afraid of death and less likely to give care to dying persons than the Swedish participants.Conclusion:It is suggested that theoretical education should be individualized and culturally sensitive in order to positively influence the students’ attitudes, and promote professional development.

This study suggests that educational designers should include specific courses about death and palliative care in undergraduate and postgraduate nursing curricula. Educational programmes need to build on the specific experiences of death and dying among nurses and auxiliary nurses.

In this study, the attitudes of student nurses from Kerman and Bam in Iran towards death and caring for dying patients were compared. Two types of questionnaire were used: the DAP-R (Death Attitude Profile Revised) and FATCOD (Frommelt Attitude Towards Caring for Dying patients). The Bam student nurses, who had more experience of death due to the Bam earthquake in December 2003, were found to be less afraid of death and also less likely to give care to people at the end of life compared to their counterparts in Kerman. In both groups, those who were educated about death and dying had more positive attitudes towards caring for people who are dying than non-educated participants. The study suggests that adding palliative care education, accompanied by a reflective narrative approach, to the nursing curriculum is necessary to improve quality of care at the end of life.