Integrating professional apprentices into an end-of-life course

Nursing education faces several challenges in providing quality and meaningful education. Providing such an education is most important in teaching end-of-life care, as nurses are pivotal in helping patients to achieve a good death. A good death is often based on physical comfort, preparation for death, and completion of social and emotional tasks. Many obstacles hinder a patient's wishes about dying, including how nurses perceive their role in end-of-life care situations and knowing how to intervene on behalf of the patient. Therefore, nursing education needs to create meaningful and relevant learning experiences to enable future nurses to effectively care for the dying patient. To this endeavor, the Palliative and End-of-Life Care course described in this article integrated knowledge through the use of three professional apprenticeships: (a) acquiring and using knowledge and science (cognitive), (b) using clinical reasoning and skilled know-how (practice), and (c) ethical comportment and formation (moral reasoning).