A Required Third-Year Medical Student Palliative Care Curriculum Impacts Knowledge and Attitudes

Abstract

A modest, required palliative care curriculum can yield improvements in medical student knowledge and attitudes. However, expansion of the experiential component and palliative care skills training and assessment are needed for students to have more meaningful outcomes and to ultimately contribute to better patient outcomes.

Attitudes of Medical Students Toward the Care of the Dying in Relation to Personality Traits

“…In the last decade, however, several interesting proposals have emerged in the literature to fill the gap. [7][8][9][10][11][12] Regarding attitudes among medical students, published studies have included a general overview 13 , an evaluation of the effects of palliative care educational interventions on affective responses to caring for dying patients and their families 10 and concerns about end-of-life care. 11 However, except for very dated studies 14,15 and a recent preliminary study on a small sample of medical students, 16 the specific relationship between medical students' attitudes toward the care of dying patients and those students' personality traits has generally been neglected in the literature.…”

Impact of the educational session on knowledge and attitude toward palliative care among undergraduate medical, nursing, and physiotherapy students: a comparative study

“…Repeated intensive programs like workshops, small group activities, interactions with patients and their families can highly influence the perceptions and leave a lasting impact. 13 Our study showed significant improvement in knowledge, pain management, and attitude scores toward palliative care following an educational session with certain limitations such as small sample size, selection of only 2 nd year undergraduates, single educational didactic session and only an immediate assessment of the impact of educational session.…”

“…Before the session, there was lack of positive attitude among the three groups toward palliative care. There was a positive change in the attitude of students toward palliative care after the session indicating the impact, 13 though it was a single didactic session. Repeated intensive programs like workshops, small group activities, interactions with patients and their families can highly influence the perceptions and leave a lasting impact.…”

“…7 Following the session, there was an overall significant improvement in knowledge, pain management and attitude scores in all the three groups (Table 2) showing the impact of the session and ability of the students in gaining knowledge about palliative care, which was similar to previous studies. 12,13 The knowledge scoring was based on students' awareness about the term palliative care, approaches and goal of palliative care and also, any need for psychological, emotional, spiritual support along with medical treatment. The pre-session and post-session knowledge scores were analyzed.…”

“…[7][8][9] After the session, the students' knowledge about morphine improved. 13 Attitude scores were based on the students' outlook toward the care and support given to terminally ill-patients, psychosocial and emotional support, whether the patients can be allowed to express emotions like anger, grief during palliative care treatment. Before the session, there was lack of positive attitude among the three groups toward palliative care.…”