Teaching and learning about terminal care

Because the same three teachers at the London Hospital Medical College both taught and examined students over an 11-year period it was possible to compare what was taught with what was recalled at examinations. The results suggest that aspects of terminal care vary greatly in their perceived importance, at least as measured by their recall and selection for presentation in the final examination. Most aspects of the taught material increased their penetration into the students' recall over the 11 years. There is evidence that the caring aspects are stressed more by women; this difference was less for descriptions of pain, and absent from accounts of the pharmacology of analgesic drugs.