Medical students do not feel confident in managing palliative care as future doctors

Abstract

Introduction: All doctors need to have knowledge of the basic principles of palliative care (PC). Hence, in the past decades, there has been an increased attention to medical students’ education in PC. Surprisingly, studies have shown that education in PC at Danish medical schools is below international standards. The aims were to investigate Danish medical students’ self-assessed confidence and opinion on PC education as well as explore association with gender, age, and semester.

Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study based on an online questionnaire-based survey among medical students at Aarhus University, Denmark.

Results: Of approximately 900 students, 250 responded (28%). Generally, participants reported low confidence in managing PC. Lowest confidence was found regarding conversion from oral to subcutaneous administration of medicine, whereas participants felt more confident in communication related to PC. Male respondents reported higher confidence in managing PC than females. Positive opinions on the relevance of PC education and of implementing more PC education were reported.

Conclusion: This study showed that improvements of PC education at Danish medical schools are pivotal. Danish medical students did not feel confident in managing PC; female students felt less confident than male students. Furthermore, we found positive opinions towards implementing more PC education.

Keywords:

• Medical education
• Palliative care curricula
• Palliative care education
• Medical students

Biographical note

Sarah Kornum Melgaard (first author) is a senior Medical Student at Aarhus University in Denmark with a special interest in palliative care. During her voluntary stay at the Palliative Care Team, Department of Oncology, Aarhus University Hospital, she realized that the education the students get in palliative care is poor in the light of what the newly educated young doctors face in the clinical setting. Therefore, she set out to examine if medical students feel confident in performing palliative care.

Mette Asbjoern Neergaard (Corresponding and last author) is an MD, PhD, Associate professor and senior consultant at the Palliative Care Unit and Child & Youth Palliative Care Team, Department of Oncology, Aarhus University Hospital (Adress: Palle Juul Jensens Boulevard 99, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark). She is originally educated as a specialist in general medicine in 2004 but has been exclusively engaged in palliative care research and clinical specialized palliative care since then. Among other things, she is the founder of the Danish Palliative Care Research Network (2006) and has been co-editor on the Danish Textbook in Palliative Care (2015).