Evaluating undergraduate palliative care education: changes in nursing students’ attitudes toward end-of-life care following a curriculum-based programme

Aim To evaluate the preparedness of undergraduate nursing students for the provision of end-of-life care and to identify their self-perceived educational needs in this domain. Background The adequate preparation of nursing students for end-of-life care delivery remains a persistent challenge within undergraduate nursing curricula. A thorough understanding of students' educational needs in this domain constitutes a prerequisite for the development of effective didactic interventions. Design A cross-sectional study. Methods The study was conducted among 101 undergraduate nursing students, who were invited to complete a questionnaire comprising 9 items derived from the Polish adaptation of the FATCOD-B scale, alongside an author-developed 15-item instrument designed to assess educational needs pertaining to the care of dying patients. Statistical analysis was performed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and linear mixed-effects models. Results The mean total FATCOD-B-PL score (9-item version) increased from 32.1 ± 3.9 to 33.9 ± 4.2 points (p = 0.0002), reflecting a small-to-moderate improvement in attitudes toward the care of dying patients (dz ≈ 0.4). Item-level analysis identified statistically significant improvements across four domains, with the most pronounced gains observed in areas pertaining to communication about death and the dying process. In self-assessment, more than half of the participants (53.5%) rated their knowledge of end-of-life care as good or very good. Conclusions The findings indicate that palliative care education grounded in a structured curriculum and supplemented with simulation-based components may substantially contribute to the development of nursing students' attitudes toward end-of-life care, while concurrently highlighting domains of unmet educational need.