Case study:

11 May 2010

Developing medical students’ knowledge of end of life care in Cambridge

Key points

A group of Palliative Care consultants and their multidisciplinary colleagues have managed to negotiate an expansion in the amount of time allocated in the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine curriculum to Palliative and end of life care from one to eight days spread over the three years of the clinical course.

The opportunity arose as the result of a major review into the clinical curriculum following the expansion of the Cambridge clinical course from 30 to 36 months.

The group were able to secure the additional curricular time by becoming closely involved in this expansion process.

Most teaching is in days or half-days throughout the three years, usually to groups of 30 students, each session being repeated five times.

Some teaching takes place with whole year groups of 170 students, and some in much smaller seminar groups.

It is hoped that as a result the medical students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes in the care of patients at the end of life will increase.

This in turn should equip them better to provide optimal end of life care as junior doctors and throughout their careers.

The teaching is consistently rated very highly by students.

The subject is now a routine part of the Final Examinations taken by the students before they qualify as doctors.

Educational research into the development of medical students’ attitudes to end of life care throughout their training is to commence shortly.