BACKGROUND: In the Arab and Islamic world, data on palliative and end-of-life (PEOL) care education are minimal.
OBJECTIVES: The current study's primary aim was to identify what PEOL care education is delivered to undergraduate nurses in Egypt and the teaching strategies used to deliver this education. A secondary aim was to assess the feasibility of using online surveys in nursing research in Egypt.
DESIGN: This is a cross-sectional survey.
SETTINGS: Ten randomly selected faculties of nursing across Egypt.
PARTICIPANTS: Nursing educators who were working at three academic departments; Medical-Surgical Nursing, Critical Care Nursing, and Gerontological Nursing; in the participating faculties.
METHODS: After face-to-face recruitment of participants, data were collected using an online questionnaire with an adjunctive use of paper questionnaires. The questionnaire assessed participants' and courses' characteristics, the inclusion of the PEOL Care Index content in the surveyed courses, and teaching strategies used to deliver this content.
RESULTS: A total of 95 nursing educators were involved in the current study (response rate = 86.4%). All participants were female, and 87.4% responded via online questionnaires. The overall coverage of the PEOL care content ranged from 76% to 100%. End-of-life care and spiritual care were the least frequently reported PEOL care topics; on average, by 19.6% and 36% of the educators, respectively. Lecture was the most frequently used teaching strategy, followed by clinical field practice (mean percentages of utilization: 77.7% and 53.6%, respectively).
CONCLUSIONS: In Egypt, most PEOL care topics are covered in undergraduate nursing curricula. Yet, educating these topics is predominantly theoretical. End-of-life care and spiritual care are the least frequently covered PEOL care topics. Online surveys are feasible for multisite curricular assessment, and this feasibility may be augmented by face-to-face recruitment of participants and adjunctive use of paper questionnaires.
Introduction: Including palliative care (PC) in overloaded medical curricula is a challenge, especially where there is a lack of PC specialists. We hypothesised that non-specialised rotations could provide meaningful PC learning when there are enough clinical experiences, with adequate feedback.
Objective: Observe the effects of including PC topics in non-specialised placements for undergraduate medical students in two different medical schools.
Design: Observational prospective study.
Setting: Medical schools in Brazil.
Participants: 134 sixth-year medical students of two medical schools.
Methods: This was a longitudinal study that observed the development of Self-efficacy in Palliative Care (SEPC) and Thanatophobia (TS) in sixth-year medical students in different non-specialised clinical rotations in two Brazilian medical schools (MS1 and MS2). We enrolled 78 students in MS1 during the Emergency and Critical Care rotation and 56 students in MS2 during the rotation in Anaesthesiology. Both schools provide PC discussions with different learning environment and approaches.
Primary outcomes: SEPC and TS Scales were used to assess students at the beginning and the end of the rotations.
Results: In both schools’ students had an increase in SEPC and a decrease in TS scores.
Conclusion: Non-specialised rotations that consider PC competencies as core aspects of being a doctor can be effective to develop SEPC and decrease TS levels.
Purpose: This multi-component educational intervention was aimed at General Internal Medicine residents’ perceived self-efficacy in providing end of life care. This study also measured the uptake of the Comfort Measures Order Set.
Methods: This non-randomized study was conducted over nine 4-week rotations on one General Internal Medicine ward. The intervention consisted of: 1) a didactic module, 2) presence of the Palliative Care Consult Team at General Internal Medicine rounds and, 3) provision of end of life care educational materials. Twenty learners completed a pre/post Self-Efficacy in Palliative Care Scale.
Data/Results: Data revealed improved self-efficacy ratings on the overall scale, and on all three subscales of the Self-Efficacy in Palliative Care Scale. The Comfort Measures Order Set was implemented in 62% of patient deaths in the intervention group, and 51% of patient deaths in the control group, demonstrating no statistical difference between these groups.
Conclusion: The uptake of the order set in both the intervention and control groups demonstrated utility in providing a clinical framework for delivering end of life care and highlighted the need for on-going education and enhancement of clinicians' self-efficacy in end of life care.
CONTEXT: The palliative medicine workforce lacks racial diversity with <5% of specialty Hospice and Palliative Medicine (HPM) fellows identifying as Black(1). Little is known about Black trainees' exposure to palliative care during their medical education.
OBJECTIVES: To describe palliative care training for Black students during medical school, residency, and fellowship training.
METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive study employing internet searches and phone communication in September 2019. We evaluated 24 medical schools in 3 pre-determined categories: historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs, N=4) and non-underrepresented minority-serving institutions with the highest (N=10) and lowest (N=10) percentage of Black medical students. Training opportunities were determined based on the presence of a course, clerkship or rotation in the medical school and residency curricula, a specialty HPM fellowship program, and specialty palliative care consult service at affiliated teaching hospitals.
RESULTS: None of the four HBCUs with a medical school offered a palliative care course or clerkship, rotation during residency, or specialty HPM fellowship program. Three of four HBCUs were affiliated with a hospital that had a palliative care consult service. Institutions with the highest Black enrollment were less likely to offer palliative care rotations during internal medicine (p= 0.046) or family medicine (p= 0.019) residency training than those with the lowest Black enrollment.
CONCLUSION: Residents at schools with the highest Black medical student enrollment lack access to palliative care training opportunities. Efforts to reduce health disparities and underrepresentation in palliative care must begin with providing palliative-focused training to physicians from underrepresented minority backgrounds.
OBJECTIVES: Many studies regarding nursing student's first experience of facing the death of a patient have focused on classroom methods or exploring attitudes towards death and related fears or anxieties. This review is the first to identify the mechanisms that facilitate practice learning as a result of students' first time experience of handling a patient's death.
DESIGN: A realist review as a form of a systematic review of the literature.
DATA SOURCES: The literature search focused on the earliest death experience of baccalaureate nursing students and end-of-life care, using databases MEDLINE, CINAHL, SCOPUS, ERIC, PSYCINFO.
REVIEW METHODS: Three research questions were addressed following a five-step process of (1) defining the scope of review and developing a theoretical framework, (2) conducting a theory-driven purposive search for evidence, (3) appraising evidence and extracting data, (4) synthesizing data and drawing conclusions, and (5) disseminating findings; with iterative expert consultation and discussion to answer the five questions of any realist review: 'what works, for whom, in what circumstances, how and why'.
RESULTS: Thirteen publications were included. Practice learning involves both changes and context improvements to be assessed and discussed by managers, leaders, nurse educators-facilitators and students. The environment and nursing role models are an inherent part of practice learning. Further work is needed to theorize the twelve key outcomes laid out in this review. These proposals require further consensus and the inclusion of inputs from both students and nurses.
CONCLUSION: The student nurse receives contradictory messages during the first experience of facing the death of a patient under their care. Considering the importance of this experience, specific indicators should be developed to track and guarantee and the optimal achievement of required competencies.
BACKGROUND: The medical student experience of a clinical elective in palliative care (PC) remains understudied. Reflective narrative interventions can help students hone narrative competency skills, make sense of their clinical experiences and shed light on their perception of the rotation.
OBJECTIVES: To evaluate medical student written reflections after a PC clinical elective.
DESIGN: Students were asked to write a short reflective essay after PC clinical electives using open-ended writing prompts.
SETTING: Essays were collected from third and fourth-year medical students after completion of a PC elective at three geographically diverse academic medical centers in the United States.
MEASUREMENTS: Essays were coded for themes using a conventional content qualitative method of analysis.
RESULTS: Thirty-four essays were analyzed and four major themes emerged: reflection on the mission of medicine or motivation for being in medicine, reflection on professional skills or lessons learned, reflection on patient's experience and personal responses to PC rotation. Sub-themes were also identified.
CONCLUSIONS: Themes underscore the utility of the PC clinical elective as a meaningful experience that imparts useful skills, builds empathy, reminds students of their own motivations for being in medicine and serves as a catalyst for reflection on their own lives and relationships with their patients. Awareness of medical students' personal and emotional responses to a PC elective can help inform educators as they support their students and provide opportunities for reflection and education.
The purpose of the current inquiry is to measure Jordanian student nurses' attitudes towards the care of dying patients using a cross-sectional survey. The sample of this study comprises 300 nursing students. Data was collected using the Frommelt's Attitude Toward Care of the Dying Form B (FATCOD-B). Most of the students were female (72%) in their second year (40.3%). The mean total score of all FATCD-B items was 95.8 out of 150 (SD 8.7). Student nurses had low mean scores for their attitude towards care of the dying. Two approaches could be taken to improve this situation. First, research is needed to fully understand and explain students' attitudes towards the care of dying patients. It might be more appropriate to utilize mixed research methods. The second is to integrate end-of-life care courses within the curricula of nursing programmes, currently the mainstay in improving students' knowledge and attitudes toward care of the dying.
Depuis plusieurs décennies, de nombreux rapports insistent sur la nécessité de diffuser les soins palliatifs en formant les étudiants en médecine à cette pratique. Dans ce contexte, l’évaluation des dispositifs pédagogiques est un impératif. Une recherche qualitative est réalisée auprès de 18 internes en médecine ayant effectué un stage de 6 mois dans une équipe de soins palliatifs, fixe ou mobile. Cette étude exploratoire vise à recueillir le retour qu’ils font sur leurs vécus lors du stage, les compétences qu’ils ont acquises, leurs appréciations sur les modalités pédagogiques. Après analyse des entretiens, cinq thématiques sont identifiées. Les internes décrivent une déstabilisation initiale en début de stage. Ils relatent un renforcement de leurs compétences professionnelles avec l’apprentissage d’un meilleur rapport à leurs émotions. Ils font le constat que de nombreuses compétences sont transférables dans leur spécialité, mais que, bien souvent, la compétence délibérative ne peut être vécue qu’individuellement. Ils mentionnent une expérience de questionnement et de réflexivité sur leur parcours professionnel et personnel. Ils soulignent le rôle favorable de l’accompagnement pédagogique. Si l’apport d’un stage en équipe de soins palliatifs apparaît manifeste, il importe que les référents pédagogiques mènent une réflexion éthique afin de bien comprendre les fondements de la clinique palliative mais aussi les décalages, les tensions, voire les paradoxes vis-à-vis du référentiel médical actuel.
Background: According to the Latin America Association for palliative care, Brazil offers only 0.48 palliative care services per 1 million inhabitants. In 2012, no accredited physicians were working in palliative care, while only 1.1% of medical schools included palliative care education in their undergraduate curricula. As a reflection of the current scenario, little research about end-of-life care has been published so that studies addressing this subject in the Brazilian setting are crucial.
Methods: A cross-sectional study study conducted with students applying for the medical residency of the Federal University of São Paulo were invited to voluntarily participate in an anonymous and self-administered questionnaire survey. The latter included demographic information, attitudes, prior training in end-of-life care, prior end-of-life care experience, the 20-item Palliative Care Knowledge Test (PCKT) and a consent term.
Results: Of the 3086 subjects applying for residency, 2349 (76%) answered the survey, 2225 were eligible for analysis while 124 were excluded due to incomplete data. Although the majority (99,2%) thought it was important to have palliative care education in the medical curriculum, less than half of them (46,2%) reported having received no education on palliative care. The overall performance in the PCKT was poor, with a mean score of 10,79 (± 3). While philosophical questions were correctly answered (81,8% of correct answers), most participants lacked knowledge in symptom control (50,7% for pain, 57,3% for dyspnea, 52,2% for psychiatric problems and 43,4% for gastrointestinal problems). Doctors that had already concluded a prior residency program and the ones that had prior experience with terminal patients performed better in the PCKT (p < 0,001). The high-performance group (more than 50% of correct answers) had received more training in end-of-life care, showed more interest in learning more about the subject, had a better sense of preparedness, as well as a higher percentage of experience in caring for terminal patients (p < 0,001).
Conclusions: Our study showed that Brazilian physicians lack not only the knowledge, but also training in end-of-life medicine. Important factors to better knowledge in end-of-life care were prior training, previous contact with dying patients and prior medical residency. Corroborating the literature, for this group, training showed to be a key factor in overall in this area of knowledge. Therefore, Brazilian medical schools and residency programs should focus on improving palliative training, especially those involving contact with dying patients.
Introduction : La loi Léonetti a donné un cadre réglementaire à la fin de vie. Si la formation des futurs médecins s’est adaptée à cette évolution, l’impact émotionnel de la fin de vie sur les futurs médecins n’a pas été étudié et son évaluation était le but de la présente étude.
Méthodes : Une enquête nationale anonyme a été effectuée auprès des étudiants en médecine lors du choix de la spécialité juste avant le début de l’internat. Le questionnaire explorait le ressenti lors d’une décision de fin de vie, les modalités d’apprentissage et les connaissances théoriques. Les résultats sont présentés en pourcentage (avec intervalle de confiance à 95 %) ou en moyenne (avec écart type).
Résultats : Sur les 3600 étudiants, 3187 questionnaires (88 %) ont été collectés et analysés. Au cours de leur externat, 85 % [83–86] des étudiants ont été exposés à une décision de fin de vie. Soixante-sept pour cent [63–71] ont exprimé un sentiment de découragement transitoire, et même un sentiment de déprime pour 62 % [59–67]. Ces situations ont entraîné une modification du projet professionnel pour environ 10 % d’entre eux. Les étudiants ont déclaré partager les difficultés rencontrées principalement avec un médecin senior et une absence de formation adéquate pour apprendre à gérer ces situations.
Discussion : Les décisions de fin de vie sont fréquemment rencontrées pendant les études de médecine. L’impact psychologique est significatif dans plus de la moitié des cas, entraînant même des changements de projet professionnel. Pour apprendre à gérer ces situations, les étudiants privilégieraient des échanges d’expériences en petits groupes.
BACKGROUND: Advanced practice registered nursing students need primary palliative care education to care for the growing number of patients with serious illness and their families and to fill the serious resource gaps in specialty palliative care.
PROBLEM: There has been a lack of primary palliative care education in most graduate nursing programs and little direction as to competencies and essential content.
APPROACH: In an effort to support faculty to teach palliative care content, the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) has created an online curriculum that meets the new American Association of Colleges of Nursing Graduate-Competencies and Recommendations for Educating Nursing Students in primary palliative care for master's degree and doctor of nursing practice students.
OUTCOMES: During the first 9 months of its release, more than 170 nursing programs have accessed the ELNEC Graduate curriculum, and there have been more than 200 student completions.
CONCLUSION: Primary palliative care education is essential for all advanced practice nursing students. The new ELNEC Graduate curriculum offers the opportunity to provide quality education remotely.
Along their professional career, nurses can find patients who require palliative care (PC). It is necessary to have at least a basic education in this area, that should be acquired during their university education. The objective of this descriptive online-survey set in five nursing Colleges was to analyze Spanish nursing students' knowledge in PC, offering an image of the status of education in PC. 619 students took an online questionnaire with the Spanish version of the Palliative Care Quiz for Nurses (PCQN-SV), which also collected information about their education in the field of PC. Univariate and bivariate analyses were performed, and a predictive binary logistic regression model was developed. Students obtained an average 45.65% of right answers in PCQN-SV, with differences related to the college and academic year in which they were enrolled and to their education in PC. In the regression model having theoretical education in PC (OR = 1.70) and academic year (OR = 1.35) showed to be both predictors of getting a result in PCQN-SV over 45% of correct answers. This study showed that Spanish nursing students have a medium-low level of knowledge in PC, and it also supports the need to develop a common framework for nurses' education in PC.
Introduction: Despite growing recognition of pediatric palliative care's importance, training in palliative care communication remains a gap in medical education. Graduating medical students frequently feel unprepared to initiate or facilitate goals of care conversations with their patients, particularly in pediatrics.
Methods: We created a 3-hour session featuring an introductory lecture on pediatric palliative care, communication drills on responding to emotion, and small-group case-based discussions utilizing role-play, targeting fourth-year medical students as the primary learners. Senior residents were also given the opportunity to develop skills by role-playing the patient parent and cofacilitating case discussions alongside palliative care faculty. Students evaluated session utility and their own confidence through pre- and postsession surveys using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree).
Results: Twenty-six students were included in the analysis over 3 years. All agreed that the session was useful (M = 4.9). Students showed significant improvement in confidence in explaining pediatric palliative care (presession M = 3.2, postsession M = 4.1, p < .001), understanding the family experience (presession M = 2.7, postsession M = 4.1, p < .001), and eliciting goals and values from families whose children face serious illnesses (presession M = 3.1, postsession M = 4.1, p < .001). Pediatric resident cofacilitators also felt the session benefited their own teaching and communication skills.
Discussion: This 3-hour interactive session on pediatric palliative care utilizing communication drills and role-play was effective in improving fourth-year medical students' confidence in communicating with families of children facing life-threatening illnesses.
BACKGROUND: Conversations about death are often associated with fear, anxiety, avoidance and misunderstandings. Many adults feel that these discussions are inappropriate and confusing for young people. In this project, two fourth-year nursing students partnered with a local palliative care team to examine death education for children. The nursing students focused on children's understandings of death and their coping abilities, the lack of appropriate discussions about death with children, and the implementation of death education in public schools. Three online death education resources were identified and evaluated for use in public schools. This project fueled preliminary local discussions and advocacy efforts in the provision of death education for children. In the future, death education will need to be incorporated into education plans at local schools, and could be done in collaboration with the local palliative care team.
BACKGROUND: Moral distress is a state in which a clinician cannot act in accordance with their ethical beliefs because of external constraints. Physician trainees, who work within rigid hierarchies and who lack clinical experience, are particularly vulnerable to moral distress. We examined the dynamics of physician trainee moral distress in end-of-life care by comparing experiences in two different national cultures and healthcare systems.
OBJECTIVE: We investigated cultural factors in the US and the UK that may produce moral distress within their respective healthcare systems, as well as how these factors shape experiences of moral distress among physician trainees.
DESIGN: Semi-structured in-depth qualitative interviews about experiences of end-of-life care and moral distress.
PARTICIPANTS: Sixteen internal medicine residents in the US and fourteen junior doctors in the UK.
APPROACH: The work was analyzed using thematic analysis.
KEY RESULTS: Some drivers of moral distress were similar among US and UK trainees, including delivery of potentially inappropriate treatments, a poorly defined care trajectory, and involvement of multiple teams creating different care expectations. For UK trainees, healthcare team hierarchy was common, whereas for US trainees, pressure from families, a lack of guidelines for withholding inappropriate treatments, and distress around physically harming patients were frequently cited. US trainees described how patient autonomy and a fear of lawsuits contributed to moral distress, whereas UK trainees described how societal expectations around resource allocation mitigated it.
CONCLUSION: This research highlights how the differing experiences of moral distress among US and UK physician trainees are influenced by their countries' healthcare cultures. This research illustrates how experiences of moral distress reflect the broader culture in which it occurs and suggests how trainees may be particularly vulnerable to it. Clinicians and healthcare leaders in both countries can learn from each other about policies and practices that might decrease the moral distress trainees experience.
Nursing students may feel unprepared to manage the care of dying individuals and may experience anxiety and fear related to death and dying. Preparing nursing students for this situation can help them provide quality care to dying patients. This study aimed to examine the end-of-life care values and behaviors and death attitudes of senior nursing students. In examining these variables, the Values and Behaviors of Intensive Care Nurses for End-of-Life Instrument and the Death Attitude Profile-Revised Scale were used. It was found that the students developed positive attitudes and behavior towards end-of-life care, and that they believed death to be a natural part of life and there is life after death. Students who felt that the information they received during their education was partially sufficient were more likely to have negative death attitudes. It can be recommended that teaching strategies in the education of the nursing students be developed.
Objectives: Positive attitudes towards end-of-life care are essential among nursing students to adequately support terminally ill patients and enable students to feel confident about providing end-of-life care. This study aimed to determine nursing students’ attitudes towards caring for terminally ill patients, as well as the associations between these attitudes and year of study, exposure to terminally ill people, self-perceived nursing skills and subjective impact of instruction.
Design: Cross-sectional study.
Setting: A health sciences school in Switzerland.
articipants: All preparatory students, first-year nursing students and third-year nursing students were invited to participate; 178 agreed to participate.
Primary outcome measure: Attitudes towards terminally ill patients were assessed using the Frommelt Attitudes Toward Care of the Dying Scale, Form B (FATCOD, Form B), as the primary outcome. Secondary measures were gender, age, year of study, number of terminally ill persons encountered, self-perceived palliative care nursing skills and subjective impact of instruction.
Results: Mean FATCOD, Form B score was 117.7 (SD: 9.8, median: 118.0). Better attitudes towards terminally ill patients were significantly associated with being aged 24–26 years (ß=6.97, 95% CI 2.00 to 11.95, p=0.006), year of study (ß=3.47, 95% CI 1.69 to 5.25, p<0.001), professional encounters with terminally ill patients (ß=3.59, 95% CI 2.23 to 4.95, p<0.001) and self-perceived palliative care nursing competence (ß=1.23, 95% CI 0.41 to 2.04; p=0.003). In the multivariate analysis, professionally encountering terminally ill patients remained significant (ß=3.00; 95% CI 1.43 to 4.57; p<0.001).
Conclusions: Nursing students’ attitudes towards caring for terminally ill patients were positive and improved as their year of study progressed. Professional exposure to terminally ill patients was the strongest factor, followed by private encounters, self-perceived palliative care nursing skills, year of study and age.
End-of-life (EOL) care is a key aspect of critical care medicine (CCM) training. The goal of this study was to survey CCM residents and program directors (PDs) across Canada to describe current EOL care education. Using a literature review, we created a self-administered survey encompassing 10 CCM national objectives of training to address: (1) curricular content and evaluation methods, (2) residents' preparedness to meet these objectives, and (3) opportunities for educational improvement. We performed pilot testing and clinical sensibility testing, then distributed it to all residents and PDs across the 13 Canadian CCM programs. Our response rate was 84.3% overall (77 [81.1%] for residents and 13 [100%] for PDs). Residents rated direct observation, informal advice, and self-reflection as both the top 3 most utilized and perceived most effective teaching modalities. Residents most commonly reported comfort with skills related to pain and symptom management (n = 67, 94.3%; score > 3 on 5-point Likert scale), and least commonly reported comfort with donation after cardiac death skills (n = 26-38; 44.8%-65.5%). Base specialty and time in CCM training were independently associated with comfort ratings for some, but not all, EOL skills. With respect to family meetings, residents infrequently received feedback; however, most PDs believed feedback on 6 to 10 meetings is required for competence. When PD perceptions of teaching effectiveness were compared with resident comfort ratings, differences were most apparent for skills related to pain and symptom management, cultural awareness, and ethical principles. By the end of their first subspecialty training year, PDs expect residents to be competent at most, but not all, EOL skills. In summary, trainees and programs rely on clinical activities to develop competency in EOL care, resulting in some educational gaps. Transitioning to competency-based medical education presents an opportunity to address some of these gaps, while other gaps will require more specific curricular intervention.
Palliative care is central to the role of all clinical doctors. There is variability in the amount and type of teaching about palliative care at undergraduate level. Time allocated for such teaching within the undergraduate medical curricula remains scarce. Given this, the effectiveness of palliative care teaching needs to be known.
OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the effectiveness of palliative care teaching for undergraduate medical students.
DESIGN: A systematic review was prepared according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidance. Screening, data extraction and quality assessment (mixed methods and Cochrane risk of bias tool) were performed in duplicate.
DATA SOURCES: Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Web of Science, ClinicalTrials.gov, Cochrane and grey literature in August 2019. Studies evaluating palliative care teaching interventions with medical students were included.
RESULTS: 1446 titles/abstracts and 122 full-text articles were screened. 19 studies were included with 3253 participants. 17 of the varied methods palliative care teaching interventions improved knowledge outcomes. The effect of teaching on clinical practice and patient outcomes was not evaluated in any study.
CONCLUSIONS: The majority of palliative care teaching interventions reviewed improved knowledge of medical students. The studies did not show one type of teaching method to be better than others, and thus no 'best way' to provide teaching about palliative care was identified. High quality, comparative research is needed to further understand effectiveness of palliative care teaching on patient care/clinical practice/outcomes in the short-term and longer-term.
Health Science students in Spain and Bolivia should be trained in the management of the processes of death and dying of patients. The aim of this study was to examine the degree of training, self-perceived safety and preferences in relation to the care of terminal and non-terminal patients. It was a descriptive, cross-sectional, multicenter study with students of Medicine, Nursing and Physiotherapy in Spain and Bolivia. The following variables were evaluated: care preparation and emotional preparation to caring for terminally ill and non-terminally ill patients, the Death Attitude Profile Revised (PAM-R) and the Bugen Scale for Facing Death. The self-perceived preparation of students for caring for terminally ill patients can be considered "fair" (mean 2.15, SD 0.756), and this was also the case for their perceived emotional preparation (mean 2.19, SD 0.827). In contrast, the score obtained for their preparedness for treating non-terminal patients was higher (mean 2.99 and 3.16, respectively). Working with terminally ill patients, including terminal or geriatric cancer patients, was the least preferred option among future health professionals. The results obtained show a limited preference for end-of-life care and treatment, highlighting a lack of preparation and motivation among health science students in Spain and Bolivia for working with these patients.