Many people worldwide need palliative care for different diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, and SLE. This need for palliative care must be met by proper training in this field at the undergraduate level, to improve future doctors’ knowledge and skills. Doctors and hospitals worldwide are not adequately equipped to manage palliative care, especially the psychosocial aspect that patients at the end of life may face, and medical schools are not adequately addressing palliative care in their curriculum. This research aimed to study the knowledge and attitude of final-year medical students at Bahri and Khartoum universities toward palliative care.
Method and Materials: A self-administered questionnaire was designed to assess the knowledge and attitude of final-year medical students toward palliative care and assess the methods of teaching it in the medical curriculum. The questionnaire is composed of three parts: knowledge, attitude, and teaching methods questions. The questionnaire was distributed online to final-year medical students at both the University of Bahri and the University of Khartoum in Sudan.
Results: Out of 568 medical students enrolled in the two universities, 259 responded. The overall knowledge of the students was found to be good, with 73% of the students answering more than half of the questions correctly. The students were found to have a poor attitude toward palliative care, with a mean score of 3.84. The majority of the students reported taking palliative care as a topic and agreed that it is mandatory to include palliative care in the medical curriculum. Those who saw palliative care as mandatory were found to have good knowledge and attitudes toward it.
Conclusion: Medical students' knowledge about palliative care is good. However, their attitude toward it is poor. Palliative care is approached in the two medical schools as a topic. The two universities should consider addressing this poor attitude in the medical curriculum.