An NPR article written by Blake Farmer explores a university’s way to improve end of life care for nursing students. The new technology they are using are actors portraying death, using verbal cues that students usually do not hear with robot simulations. They also use actors to emulate dying patient’s family members. Nurses often have to confront patients and their family members with bad news, so by using actors as an education tool, hopefully students focus on how to communicate bad news with compassion. Possessing compassion is extremely important in a nurse’s roles as a healthcare provider, as they help patients and family members through difficult processes. More realistic education tools are becoming more popular because of surveys and research studies that show “death anxiety among young nurses” (Farmer). Does this actually prepare nursing students for what’s to come? Does it help rid their anxiety? Does teaching compassion help with care curriculum? I began looking into the research studies mentioned in the NPR article to find information on the questions I posed.
In 2011, the Department of Health Administration and Nursing at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center sought to find gaps in end of life care in continuing education. Surveys were conducted and found that “twenty-five percent of the respondents do not believe they are adequately prepared to effectively care for a dying patient”( White 2011). Symptom management and how to talk to patients and family members rated one on the top competency inadequacies. Implications of this study result in improving educational curriculum for nurses. In care education for undergraduates, this survey is important because if there can be realistic end of life care education in undergraduate students, it may be beneficial in practice.
Because more realistic end of life care is becoming more prominent today, hopefully inadequacies in caring for patients will decrease. On a personal level, I know that if I have effective tools and skills to communicate with patients and family members about end of life care, I can be better at my job and help alleviate stress for family members.
A review done by “Nurse Education Today” evaluated end of life care in curriculum for undergraduate nursing students. This review was done because “research suggests that nursing students have anxieties and difficulty dealing with death and dying” (Gillan). The review done found minimal content in end of life care in textbooks, and 3% of 311 nursing programs surveyed in the United States have courses dedicated on end of life education. Results like this can set nurses up for failure in the future. No wonder nurses are stressed and anxious, their field requires end of life care that is a lot more complicated than taking vitals. Compassion and communication are critical for nurses providing valuable care. Realistic end of life education can help cultivate compassion and communication tools for future nurses, which not only help the care they give, but the care we all might receive.
Works cited:
“End of Life Care Education, Past and Present: A Review of the Literature.” NeuroImage, Academic Press, 7 July 2013, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0260691713002098.
White, K R, and P J Coyne. “Nurses’ Perceptions of Educational Gaps in Delivering End-of-Life Care.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, Nov. 2011, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22037333/.
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/19/686830475/morphine-and-a-side-of-grief-counseling-nurses-learn-how-to-handle-death
https://uncw.edu/simlab/
Data/Society/Decision-making Spring 2019 