Undergraduate nursing students' responses to an end-of-life educational session.

Abstract

End-of-life care is an important component of healthcare students' education. The purpose of this study was to explore nursing students' perspectives of end-of-life decision-making and end-of-life care following an ethics session during the 2020-2021 academic year. A qualitative study was performed. Thirty-six undergraduate nursing students in their junior year at a private, Catholic university located in the northeast United States participated. Two nursing faculty and one bioethicist conducted an educational session on end-of-life care developed with a focus on decision-making, autonomy and dignity while employing debate pedagogy as a teaching modality. Following the session, the students were given a letter of solicitation with a link to a Qualtrics survey with four open ended questions related to end-of-life care. Four main themes, as being perceived by students, were discovered: decision-making, autonomy, the nurses' role, and the interprofessional team as important components of end-of-life care. Implications for future research include debate pedagogy as a method to teach end-of-life care and ethical decision-making as well as quantitative research or mixed methods with larger sample sizes and across health professions.