2025/02/17 by Alicia Rey, Rey, Alicia, Boris Cantin +3
Health Professions · Medicine · #Einstellung zum Tod #Empathy and Medical Education #Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnout #Innovations in Medical Education #Medicine and health #Medizinstudierende #Palliativpflege #attitude to death #medical education #medical students #medizinische Ausbildung #palliative care #qualitative Forschung #qualitative research
paper · doi:10.3205/zma001728
openalex publication_date 2025/02/17 · openalex created_date 2025/05/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
Importance and objective: All medical students are confronted with death during their medical curriculum. Despite this, too few qualitative studies have examined this reality's impact, the support provided by clinical supervisors and the theoretical instruction dedicated to this theme in the university curriculum. This study explores these issues and gives students an opportunity to express themselves, to improve their training and well-being during their pre-graduate. Design/method: year medical students at the University of Fribourg engaged in clinical rotations in all the main medical specialties, with in-depth exploration of their experience with death, the support provided by their supervisors and the preparation provided by the university curriculum. A thematic analysis was conducted. Findings: Five themes emerged: fantasies about death before the encounter, first encounters with death, need for a global approach, impact of clinical supervisors' skills and denial of death during training. Whether positive or negative, confronting death is often an intense experience for students. They value clinical supervisors who care about how they're feeling, which is all too rare. According to students, the curriculum absolutely needs to be improved to better prepare them for the reality on the ground. Conclusion: This study highlights the intensity of students' experiences with death and enables us to propose necessary improvements to their support and training. We believe that students would benefit from a space in which to explore their experiences with death. This would enable them to develop better skills for supporting end-of-life patients and their loved ones, while enhancing their own resources.