The Death Café: Effectiveness of a hospice care educational program for nursing undergraduates based on LIFE experience—A qualitative study

Abstract

BackgroundNursing students' knowledge of hospice care is limited to textbooks due to the inadequate education and training system in China and student's willingness to participate in hospice care. ObjectivesTo deepen nursing students' understandings toward life and death, to improve their knowledge about hospice care, and to promote their willingness for hospice care practice. DesignThis study used a qualitative descriptive study design. SettingsThe study was conducted at a medical university in Sichuan province, China. Participants71 nursing sophomores participated in this study. MethodsThe Death Café teaching program was implemented which requires students to recall their memories about death and to imagine how they felt about dying, as if they were having a conversation in a death-themed café. During the implementation phase, a small-group interactive teaching approach was utilized. During the reflection phase, the students were asked to finish an essay answering four questions without standard right answers. The essays that students finished were used for evaluating the effectiveness of the Death Café program. The answers of the first two questions were presented as a word cloud. Graneheim and Lundman's qualitative content analysis method was used to analyze answers of the third and fourth questions. ResultsWord cloud analysis indicated that at the beginning of the program participants showed more negative emotions (i.e., fearful). Students' attitudes toward death changed from negative to positive through imagining death when role-playing the different stages of life. The program enhanced students' understanding of life and taught the students effective ways to cope with death. Students clarified the objectives and necessary preparation for providing hospice care and gained new understandings for improving their hospice skills. ConclusionsThe Death Café program can address students' negative emotions and perceptions of death. Students gained personal benefits and professional benefits of coping with life and death from the program.