Educating for the end: A decade of death literacy interventions in U.S. health professions training.

Abstract

Most healthcare professionals in medicine, nursing, social work, counseling, and pharmacy receive little formal end-of-life education, and the extent of incorporating culturally informed death education into training remains unclear. This scoping review (N = 18) examined death literacy interventions in U.S.-based health professional education and identified which death literacy components (factual, practical, experiential, and community) were addressed. Most interventions targeted medical and nursing students; fewer than half incorporated cultural content, which varied considerably in depth and approach. Common intervention strategies included didactic learning, experiential activities, reflective writing, and peer/expert discussions. Factual death literacy was most frequently addressed; community death literacy was rarely represented. Most interventions were single-site and relied on quasi-experimental or qualitative designs, highlighting the early-stage and limited rigor of existing evidence. Greater attention to cultural context and community engagement may improve practitioners' readiness, competence, and emotional capacity to support dying individuals, their families, and their own response to death.