ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The impact of death and dying on nursing students: an explanatory
model
Montserrat Edo-Gual, Joaqu ın Tom as-S abado, Dolores Bardallo-Porras and Cristina Monforte-Royo
Aims and objectives. To explore nursing students’ experiences of death and dying
in clinical practice.
Background. The encounter with death constitutes one of the most stressful experi-
ences reported by nursing students during their clinical training. In particular, it can
be difficult for student nurses to cope with the patient’s suffering, to provide postmor-
tem care and to communicate with the patient and his/her family as death approaches.
Although some research has been carried out in relation to this phenomenon, there
remains a need to identify and understand the situations and experiences that are of
most concern to students, those which may affect their ability to cope and, therefore,
interfere with the care they are able to offer to the dying patient and his/her family.
Design. Qualitative descriptive and hermeneutic study.
Methods. Semi-structured interviews (n = 12) were conducted with nursing stu-
dents. Data were collected in 2012–2013. Transcripts were analysed using Cola-
izzi’s seven-step procedure.
Findings. The analysis identified five themes: impact, training in end-of-life care,
ethical issues, coping and learning/growth/healing connections. The central theme
was the enormous impact the encounter with death had, while the other themes
were a response to and/or modulators of this impact. An explanatory model was
derived on the basis of the relationship between all these emergent themes.
Conclusions. It is essential to understand nursing students’ experience of death so
as to minimise its impact. The explanatory model described here could be a useful
tool for the design of training programmes on end-of-life care.
Relevance to clinical practice. Adequate training of this kind would help to
ensure that future nurses offer high-quality care to patients and their families,
minimising the impact of death and preventing emotional fatigue.
Key words: clinical training, coping, impact of death, nursing students, qualitative
research
What does this paper contribute
to the wider global clinical
community?
• Specific training in end-of-life
care should be offered at the
start of nurse education through
a combination of experiential
and participatory methods.
• Adequate training of this kind
would help to ensure that future
nurses offer high-quality care to
patients and their families, mini-
mising the impact of death and
preventing emotional fatigue.
• Further research is needed to
assess the effectiveness of train-
ing programmes.
Accepted for publication: 20 February 2014
Authors: Montserrat Edo-Gual, PhD candidate, MSN, RN, Associ-
ate Professor, Escuela Universitaria de Enfermer ıa Gimbernat,
Universidad Aut onoma de Barcelona Sant Cugat del Vall es;
Joaqu ın Tom as-S abado, PhD, RN, Associate Professor, Escuela
Universitaria de Enfermer ıa Gimbernat, Universidad Aut onoma de
Barcelona Sant Cugat del Vall es; Dolores Bardallo-Porras, PhD,
MSN, RN, Associate Professor, Department of Nursing, School of
Medicine and Health Sciences, Universitat Internacional de Catalu-
nya Sant Cugat del Vall es; Cristina Monforte-Royo, PhD, MSN,
RN, Adjunct Full Professor, Department of Nursing, School of
Medicine and Health Sciences, Universitat Internacional de
Catalunya and WeCare Chair: End-of-life Care, Universitat
Internacional de Catalunya, Sant Cugat del Vall es, Spain
Correspondence: Montserrat Edo-Gual, Associate Professor, Escu-
ela Universitaria de Enfermer ıa Gimbernat, Universitat Aut onoma
de Barcelona, Av. de la Generalitat 202-206, Sant Cugat del Vall es
08174, Barcelona, Spain. Telephone: +34 01134935893727.
E-mail: montserrat.edo@eug.es
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Journal of Clinical Nursing, doi: 10.1111/jocn.12602 1