Fan Jin Wei, Schmidt Laura Tham, Chua Ming Marcus, Lee Geok Ling, Goh Lay Hoon, Lo Chue Har, Devi M Kamala, Ang Wei How Darryl
Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Department of Nursing, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, National Healthcare Group, Singapore.
Nurse Educ Today. 2025 Feb;145:106502. doi: 10.1016/j.nedt.2024.106502. Epub 2024 Nov 26.
The current medical and nursing curricula place little emphasis on palliative and end-of-life care. Consequently, students are less comfortable in communicating about topics related to death and dying when providing palliative and end-of-life care. Death cafés utilizes a facilitator-led small group to encourage conversations about death and dying to take place alongside food and beverages in a safe environment. In light of the presence of death taboos, there is a need to understand how medical and nursing students perceive the incorporation of a death café within the undergraduate program.
This study aimed to explore the perceptions of medical and nursing students regarding the utility and feasibility of incorporating death cafés into their undergraduate education.
A qualitative study was conducted.
This study was conducted in one medical school in a university in Singapore. Participants above the ages of 18 years, pursuing a full time undergraduate medical or nursing program were invited. A purposive sampling approach using the maximum variation sampling technique to enhance representativeness was used to select the participants based on their sociodemographic and academic variables. A total of 32 medical and nursing students were included in the study. Online individual interviews were conducted. The interviews were then transcribed and analyzed using qualitative content analysis.
Three main categories were developed from the content analysis: (1) Perceptions of death cafés, (2) Features of a death café, and (3) Contents of a death café conversation. Participants viewed the death café as a platform for conversations surrounding death and dying. Several features such as the presence of a facilitator and discussions to be held in small groups were surfaced. The proposed topics to be discussed ranged from communication skills, coping with death encounters, and understanding more about the concepts of palliative care.
Medical and nursing students view death cafes as a feasible and potential approach in learning pallative and end-of-life care. The use of a faciliator-guided small group discussion on topics such as coping with death, communication techniques and concepts of palliative care are proposed. Further work is needed to examine how the death café method can potentially impact students' confidence and skills in managing palliative and end-of-life care.
当前的医学和护理课程很少强调姑息治疗和临终关怀。因此，在提供姑息治疗和临终关怀时，学生在谈论与死亡相关的话题时会感到不自在。死亡咖啡馆通过主持人引导的小组形式，在安全的环境中，鼓励人们在饮食时谈论死亡。鉴于存在死亡禁忌，有必要了解医学和护理专业学生如何看待在本科课程中引入死亡咖啡馆。
本研究旨在探讨医学和护理专业学生对将死亡咖啡馆纳入本科教育的实用性和可行性的看法。
进行了一项定性研究。
本研究在新加坡一所大学的医学院进行。邀请了年龄在18岁以上、正在攻读全日制本科医学或护理课程的学生。采用目的抽样法，运用最大变异抽样技术，根据社会人口统计学和学术变量选择参与者，以提高代表性。共有32名医学和护理专业学生纳入研究。进行了在线个人访谈。访谈内容随后进行转录，并采用定性内容分析法进行分析。
内容分析形成了三个主要类别：（1）对死亡咖啡馆的看法，（2）死亡咖啡馆的特点，（3）死亡咖啡馆对话的内容。参与者将死亡咖啡馆视为围绕死亡和临终进行对话的平台。浮现出了一些特点，如主持人的存在以及以小组形式进行讨论。拟讨论的主题包括沟通技巧、应对死亡经历以及更多地了解姑息治疗的概念。
医学和护理专业学生认为死亡咖啡馆是学习姑息治疗和临终关怀的一种可行且有潜力的方法。建议采用主持人引导的小组讨论形式，讨论应对死亡、沟通技巧和姑息治疗概念等主题。需要进一步研究以考察死亡咖啡馆方法如何潜在地影响学生在管理姑息治疗和临终关怀方面的信心和技能。
