Communicating With Dying Patients and Their Families: Multimedia Training in End-of-Life Care:

Background:The need for end-of-life (EOL), high-impact education initiatives to prepare medical students to communicate with dying patients and their families and to cope with issues of death and dying, is well recognized.Methods:Third-year medical students (n = 224), during their ambulatory rotation, completed a multimedia EOL curriculum, which included pre-/posttests, an online case-based module, didactic presentation, and a tablet computer application designed to demonstrate the signs and symptoms seen in the last hours of life for families of dying patients. Pre- and posttests were compared using Pearson χ2 or Fisher exact test, and improvement was measured by weighted κ coefficient.Results:On preintervention surveys, the majority of students demonstrated positive attitudes toward the care of dying patients and their families. Despite this high pretest positive attitude, there was a statistically significant overall positive attitude change after the intervention. The lowest pretest positive attitudes...