Preparing healthcare students for palliative care is essential

The World Health Organization (WHO) is clear about what constitutes palliative care and its goals: ‘Palliative care is a crucial part of integrated, people-centred health services. Relieving serious health-related suffering, be it physical, psychological, social or spiritual, is a global ethical responsibility,’ (WHO, 2022). Regardless of the cause of suffering among people who are at the end of life, the provision of palliative care should be readily available. This has implications for training, education and preparing healthcare students for this specialist field of practice.

Healthcare students from nursing, physiotherapy, midwifery and medicine will care for a dying person later in their career or during their training on placement. Palliative care comes with the added difficulty of being emotive and it can be frighteningly sensitive to openly talk about death and dying. It is human nature to save lives and most healthcare professionals are trained to do just that. Yet palliative care asks the same professionals to perform a 360-degree attitude shift and accept dying as an appropriate outcome or end point for people in the palliative care phase. Instead of saving lives and treating patients to recover functionality in their lives, with goals and ambitions, palliative care is about person-centred care providing comfort from pain and psychological symptoms in order to promote a dignified death.