Palliative and End-of-Life Care Education Among Alpert Medical School Students.

Doctors in almost every branch of medicine encounter patients who are dying or have serious illnesses. Numerous studies, however, indicate that the education of physicians does not adequately prepare them for such patients. We aimed to characterize the current training of Alpert Medical School (AMS) students on palliative and end-of-life care using a cross-sectional, web-administered survey. We discovered less than half of Alpert Medical School students have worked with dying patients, and almost a quarter of graduating medical students did not feel prepared to palliate common symptoms including pain, nausea, shortness of breath, and anxiety. We also found that exposure to dying individuals was significantly associated with many symptom management skills and more favorable attitudes toward palliative medicine. We therefore recommend that palliative care skills, which are relevant to all future physicians regardless of specialty, be incorporated throughout the AMS curriculum, and that more students be exposed to patients at end-of-life.