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Background: The concept of “good and bad deaths” has been widely addressed in the literature. However, little is known of undergraduate nursing students' experiences with death in clinical practice or how they perceive good and bad deaths. Objective: To explore undergraduate nursing students' personal and professional/clinical experiences of death and dying. Design: A qualitative narrative inquiry design. Setting and Participants: Eighteen third year Bachelor of Nursing students participated in the study. Methods: Data was collected through individual participant interviews and analysed using Clandinin and Connelly's three dimensions of narrative inquiry (temporality, sociality and place). Results: A key finding of the study revealed that students' death experiences are shaped by the role of others, especially experienced nurses in clinical practice. Embodied good death experiences were influenced by the presence of nurses who guided students through the experience. Disembodied bad death experiences were influenced by undignified care, ritualistic post-mortem care and the physical coldness of the deceased and the environment. Conclusion: Nursing students need meaningful preparation to undertake end of life care in clinical practice, including post-mortem care and the possibility of bad deaths. End of life care education and end of life care simulation play a role in preparing students for end of life care in clinical practice. End of life care education needs to be commenced early in the undergraduate degree. Furthermore, nursing clinicians need to be aware of the impact that they have in shaping good and bad death experiences for undergraduate nursing students, the Registered Nurses of the future.

Because nurses are at the forefront of end‐of‐life care, it is imperative that nursing students are prepared for this role upon graduation. Research suggests that many nursing students are unprepared to deliver compassionate and quality end‐of‐life care. There have been many attempts to address this need; one emerging method is end‐of‐life care simulation. This paper explores the experiences of 18 undergraduate nursing students of end‐of‐life care simulation. Participants' stories were obtained via observation during end‐of‐life care simulation, audio‐recorded post simulation debriefing, and semi‐structured interviews. Using Clandinin and Connolly's three dimensions of Narrative Inquiry (temporality, spatiality, and sociality) participants' stories reflected convergence of time, place, and person. Findings revealed three distinct plotlines along a time continuum, specifically surrounding time of death: (i) “The privilege of end‐of‐life care;” (ii) “Witnessing death as surreal” and; (iii) “The honor of providing after‐death care.” Participants' narratives suggest that end‐of‐life care simulation is an important means of preparing students for clinical end‐of‐life care experiences. This has implications for nursing educators wishing to consider simulation in end‐of‐life care education.

Clinical placement learning experiences are integral to all health and medical curricula as a means of integrating theory into practice and preparing graduates to deliver safe, high-quality care to health consumers. A growing challenge for education providers is to access sufficient clinical placements with experienced supervisors who are skilled at maximising learning opportunities for students. This paper reports on the development and evaluation of an innovative online learning program aimed at enhancing student and clinical supervisors’ preparedness for effective workplace-based learning. The evidence-based learning program used ‘story-telling’ as the learning framework. The stories, which were supported by a range of resources, aimed to engage the learners in understanding student and supervisor responsibilities, as well as the expectations and competencies needed to support effective learning in the clinical environment. Evaluation of this program by the learners and stakeholders clearly indicated that they felt authentically ‘connected’ with the characters in the stories and developed insights that suggested effective learning had occurred.

Background Research on end of life care education suggests that undergraduate nursing students are largely unprepared to provide end of life care to dying patients and their families. Although there have been attempts to address the issue of lack of preparedness, little is known on how to improve this. Literature Review Aims To examine how end of life care education has been delivered to undergraduate nursing students and to critically discuss the research on modes of delivery and teaching strategies. Review Methods An extensive literature search on end of life care education in the undergraduate nursing curriculum was conducted in CINAHL, Mosby's Index, Cochrane Database, Scopus, Eric via Proquest, and Medline. 18 research papers published between 1984 and 2012 that met the selection criteria are included in the review. Findings Findings of these 18 articles are reported under two main themes: Modes of End of Life Education Delivery and End of Life Care Education Initiatives. Conclusion This review highlights issues with end of life care education and suggests that end of life care simulation is an innovative strategy that may help to prepare undergraduate nursing students to provide quality end of life care.

Background Simulation is an evolving pedagogical approach to teaching in many undergraduate nursing curricula, however, there is little published literature on end of life care simulation as an effective means of teaching nursing students about end of life care. Literature review aims To examine available literature on end of life care simulation. Review methods An extensive literature search on end of life care simulation in the undergraduate nursing curriculum was conducted in CINAHL, Mosby's Index, Cochrane Database, Scopus, Eric via Proquest, and Medline. 6 research articles and 10 descriptive articles published between 2009 and 2013 that met the selection criteria are included in the review. Findings Findings of these 16 articles are reported under 4 main themes: 1) Increased knowledge of end of life care through ‘experiential learning’; 2) Impact of family presence on student learning; 3) the Debriefing imperative, and 4) Methodological issues raised from studies. Conclusion The findings of the studies reviewed support end of life care simulation as a strong and viable pedagogical approach to learning for its positive effects on knowledge acquisition, communication skills, self-confidence, student satisfaction and level of engagement in learning. However, the important factors including psychological safety of students and the costs involved require careful consideration. Research on the use of simulation in nursing is still in its infancy, further research using various research designs is required to adequately explore the issues surrounding end of life care simulation.

INTRODUCTION Interprofessional collaboration is essential to ensure safe and effective patient-centred care. Health care students need to gain an understanding of the roles played by interprofessional team members to provide optimal care at the end-of-life. Interprofessional education and simulation are becoming important strategies in providing health care students with opportunities to learn interprofessionally. However, there is limited evidence in the literature on interprofessional simulation, and more specifically on interprofessional end-of-life care simulation. The aim of this research project was to provide students from four health care disciplines from the School of Health at a rural Australian university with an opportunity to experience simulated interprofessional end-of-life care. This paper will discuss the qualitative results obtained from student evaluations following an interprofessional workshop. METHODS Fifteen undergraduate students from nursing, social work, medicine and pharmacy volunteered to attend an experiential workshop on palliative care. The central approach to learning during the workshop was a simulation scenario. Following the 15-minute simulation scenario, a debriefing session was used to understand the student’s experiences. Participants also completed a short evaluation survey that included both qualitative and quantitative responses. RESULTS Several themes emerged from this study; the most dominant theme was recognition by participants of the importance of supportive and respectful interprofessional teamwork in palliative care. CONCLUSION Palliative care simulation provides one strategy to provide insight into palliative care in critical care using an interprofessional approach.

Providing end of life care is a challenging and anxiety provoking prospect for many undergraduate nursing students and many students report a lack of preparedness in providing care. The limited availability of appropriate clinical placements limits the opportunities for nursing students to gain experience in end of life care. Advances in simulation techniques using high fidelity mannequins enable the mimicking of complex patient scenarios such as cessation of life in the provision of end of life care. A group of nursing academics at a rural Australian University designed, developed and implemented end of life care simulation to a group of 3rd year nursing students. The aim of this paper is to report on the evaluation of this educational innovation. Five major themes were identified through analysis of student evaluations: 1) Linking of theory to practice; 2) Approaching families of dying patients; 3) An encounter with death; 4) ‘Hands on’ experience in a ‘protected environment’, and; 5) Importance of post simulation discussion and debriefing. End of life care simulation has provided a valuable experience that can be difficult to obtain in clinical practice settings. However, the challenges discussed in this paper need to be taken into consideration for future use.