Effects of a Simulation Exercise on Nursing Students' End-of-Life Care Attitudes

BACKGROUND: Students consider end-of-life care content in their nursing curricula to be inadequate and deficient in promoting the development of the necessary attitudes to care for dying patients. Research identifies simulation as an effective teaching strategy to examine nursing students' attitudes toward end-of-life care. METHOD: An end-of-life care simulation was developed, implemented, and evaluated. Attitudes toward caring for dying patients were measured pre- and postsimulation on a convenience sample of 57 sophomore nursing students using the Frommelt Attitudes Toward Care of the Dying Scale-Form B. Repeated measures of ANOVA on outcome variables evaluated student attitudes toward end-of-life care. RESULTS: Participation in an end-of-life care simulation resulted in more positive student attitudes toward caring for dying patients (p < .001). CONCLUSION: Simulation is an active learning strategy to incorporate end-of-life care in nursing curricula and improve student attitudes toward caring for dying patients. [J Nurs Educ. 2016;55(12):701-705.].