Mindful Simulation Training in Palliative Care Education for Nursing Students

Palliative care addresses the physical, psychological, social, cultural, and spiritualneeds of patients with life‐limiting illness and their families. In Hong Kong, palliativecare services have expanded from hospital settings to community care homes, increasingdemand for well‐prepared nursing graduates. Nursing students as the future palliativecare workforce often encounter dying patients during placements with inadequateeducational preparation, resulting in negative attitudes, death anxiety, and emotionaldistress. Evidence shows nursing students report less positive end‐of‐life (EOL)attitudes and lower confidence than practicing nurses, with documented gaps inundergraduate palliative care curricula. Compassion fatigue is well established amongnurses in palliative settings and has also been documented among nursing students duringclinical placements. Conversely, compassion practice and adaptive coping are associatedwith reduced burnout and enhanced satisfaction.Simulation‐based training provides opportunities for experiential, reflective, andaffective learning in palliative care, with evidence supporting improvements inknowledge, attitudes, communication, and emotional preparedness. However, few simulationstudies have integrated mindfulness components specifically targeting psychologicalflexibility and compassion competence.This is a three‐arm, parallel‐group randomized controlled trial with a sequentialmixed‐methods study designed to compare the effectiveness of Mindful Simulation Training(MST), Traditional Simulation Training (TST), and a Waitlist Control (WC) over a 4‐weekintervention period with follow‐up at 8 weeks on improving the compassion, palliativecare knowledge, attitudes toward end‐of‐life care, and professional quality of life amongundergraduate nursing students.