Understanding the Perceptions That Professional Healthcare Students Have About Conversations Around Death and Dying
Background: Death Over Dinner (DoD) for Healthcare Professionals (https://deathoverdinnerhealthcare.org) is a free, open access website that was created as a resource for healthcare workers to connect around the subjects of death and dying, and to help them process the grief and stress that comes with caring for patients at the end of life. Three medical students organized and facilitated two virtual interprofessional events with participating students (n=27) enrolled in medicine, pharmacy, and nursing.
Methods: Following the events, participants were invited to complete an optional, anonymous electronic survey on QualtricsTM. Survey data and narrative responses were collected to answer the following research question: Would students currently enrolled in health sciences programs find DoD a valuable experience? To answer this question, student researchers and their faculty advisors acted as facilitators to host two DoD events in which 18 medical, 5 nursing, and 4 pharmacy students participated in two separate events held virtually using ZOOM, an adaptation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Results: Twenty-six (97%) participants voluntarily completed the survey. Analysis of the data revealed that 86% noted they 'felt comfortable' during the event, 27% felt it had a 'healing effect' and another 27% indicated they 'hope for future experiences like DoD', suggesting that the DoD event engaged students in a valuable, informal conversation around the topics of death and dying. Qualitative data looked at student comments and highlights the importance of interprofessional events such as DoD and included these remarks: “There is always value in hearing the perspectives of another, and I surely learned a lot from the perspectives presented in this experience”, “It was interesting to get a sense of other students' interest in the subject and to hear some specifics about what brought them to the dinner” and “We all have our individual experiences, but there are not very many opportunities to share openly with others.”
Conclusions: Results suggest that interprofessional students (n=27) from medicine, nursing and pharmacy found value in the DoD activity, especially in regard to the opportunity to collaborate with peers.
Implications: These events will inform our research into future interprofessional DoD conversations between medical, pharmacy, and nursing students. By continuing to host these events with interprofessional student groups, we look forward to gathering and analyzing additional data about the importance of honest and open conversations about death and dying in health sciences education. Our next goal is to host a recorded Death over Dinner in order to qualitatively explore how students interact with the curriculum. We hope to gain insight into how students approach end of life decisions, and how they feel that might influence the care they provide for future patients.
