Are undergraduate nurses taught palliative care during their training?

Over 90% of hospital beds are occupied by patients with a chronic life threatening illness and many of these patients require palliative care. Nurses have an important role in the provision of palliative care and this paper reports a study aimed at finding how much teaching is given in palliative care during undergraduate nurse training. A short questionnaire containing open questions and inviting further comments was sent to senior tutors co-ordinating entry level degree and diploma nursing courses as listed in NABMS and UCAS handbooks. One hundred and eight questionnaires were sent and the overall response rate was 40% with approximately equal numbers of diploma and degree courses responding. Diploma students received a mean of 7.8h (range: 2-26h) and degree students 12.2h (range: 3 to 42 hours) of teaching in palliative care, compared to the mean of 20h teaching offered to undergraduate medical students in the UK. Teaching was mainly theoretical and rarely formally assessed. Tutors identified the lack of suitably skilled staff to teach palliative care and the shortage of placements for nursing students within a palliative care setting as particular difficulties. The need for nurses who are skilled in the principles of palliative care will increase with the recognition of application of palliative care to non-oncology patients. This paper suggests it is important that all nurses are given some teaching in this area.