Single simulation session to introduce large medical student groups to end-of-life care

High-fidelity simulation is an effective tool for the education of medical students in end-of-life care. Reported examples often involve small groups or repeated sessions. We demonstrate the use of a large group, single session format to improve medical students' confidence in providing ward-based end-of-life care.

We designed a single, hour-long simulation session for up to 30 junior clinical medical students, with an online tutorial prior. A mixed-method quantitative and qualitative approach consisting of a repeated survey and a semistructured interview was used to assess change in confidence in the topic and explore their thoughts on their future role and use of simulation.

The survey demonstrated an increase in confidence in students' ability to communicate with family and certify death. The semistructured interviews found that our students had personal experience but lacked clinical experience with death and dying and were naïve to their future role as junior doctors. They found benefit in simulation as a teaching modality and thought prebriefing was beneficial.

We demonstrated that a single session can be effective to introduce end-of-life care to a large group of medical students. This could provide a shared foundation on which to build in future clinical placements in a resource-constrained environment.