Objective To understand the current situation of cognition and demand of life and death education for general medical students in a medical college in Hebei Province, and to provide reference for improving the life and death education program for general medical students. Methods A simple random sampling method was used to select 427 general medical students from a medical college in Hebei Province in 2023 as the research object. A questionnaire was used to analyze the cognition and demand of general medical students for life and death education. Results 63.68% of general medical students believed that it was very important to carry out life and death education, and 52.49% of general medical students had a general understanding of life and death education. Regarding the role of life and death education related courses, medical students believed that it is helpful to establish a correct and positive view of life and death(80.10%),enhance professional identity(68.41%),and reduce death anxiety and fear(49.50%). Most of the general medical students think that the level of life and death education should be school education (42.30%) and family education(41.30%) .49.50% of general medical students said that they had not studied special courses, but had involved life and death education knowledge in other courses.40.30% of general medical students thought that life and death education should be carried out in middle school. The contents of life and death education courses that general medical students want to understand are mainly life and death consciousness(68.66%),life culture(62.94%),life and death knowledge(57.71%),life and death essence and dignity(51.49%),life and death safety(46.02%) .There were statistically significant differences in the importance of life and death education, the cognition of knowledge related to life and death education, and the necessity of setting up life and death education courses in schools among general medical students who received life and death education at different times(P<0.05) .Conclusion General medical students have insufficient knowledge of life and death education, but have a large demand for it. The earliest exposure time of general medical students to life and death related knowledge will positively affect their cognition of life and death education. Therefore, corresponding measures should be taken to improve the cognition of life and death education of general medical students and meet their needs for life and death education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]