Background: Competency in end-of-life (EOL) care is a growing expectation for health professions students. This study assessed the impact of four EOL care scenarios, using high-fidelity simulation, on the perceived learning needs and attitudes of pharmacy and nursing students.
Method: On three campuses, pharmacy students (N = 158) were exposed to standard paper EOL case scenarios, while a fourth campus exposed eight graduate nursing and 37 graduate pharmacy students to simulated versions of the same cases.
Results: The paper-based groups produced similar pre-post changes on the End of Life Professional Caregiver Survey. Results were pooled and compared with the simulation-only group, revealing significantly higher changes in pre-post scores for the simulation group.
Conclusion: Students participating in the simulation group showed some significant differences in attitudes toward EOL care, compared with students in the classroom setting. [J Nurs Educ. 2017;56(4):205-210.].
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