Palliative care: challenges for health education

Abstract

This integrative literature review analyzed the scientific production on palliative care and the education of health undergraduates. Data was collected by searching the Periódicos Capes database, using the descriptors “cuidados paliativos” (palliative care) and “ensino” (education), only in Portuguese, filtering for the last five years. After reading of titles and abstracts, ten articles were selected from the 61 found. Results show that the curricula of most health programs do not include palliative care education, resulting in theoretical, practical, and psychological unpreparedness. The analysis highlighted the key role played by philosophy and bioethics in the education of health professionals, inducing more ethical, appropriate, and humane professional conduct. The theory-practice dynamics was the most suggested as a means of properly introducing palliative care in the training process of health programs.