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Table 6 Unifying category: Factors that promote or hinder palliative care learning

From: Finnish nursing students’ perceptions of the development needs in palliative care education and factors influencing learning in undergraduate nursing studies – a qualitative study

Main category

Category

Subcategory

Factors that facilitate palliative care learning (f = 66)

Previous clinical experience about palliative care (f = 31)

Palliative care clinical practice (f = 15)

Work experience from clinical settings (f = 14)

Mentoring in clinical practice (f = 2)

Obtained formal education (f = 25)

Elective studies regarding palliative care (f = 10)

Education obtained while studying for a former health care degree (f = 10)

The expertise of the teacher (f = 5)

Intrinsic motivation to learn about palliative care (f = 10)

Personal interest in palliative care (f = 5)

Thesis completed on the subject of palliative care (f = 4)

Personal experience of palliative care (f = 1)

Barriers to palliative care learning (f = 335)

Insufficient amount of education (f = 119)

Too little education of palliative care (f = 92)

Too superficial education (f = 14)

No education of palliative care (f = 7)

Too concise course of palliative care (f = 6)

Insecurity about own performance in palliative care (f = 56)

Too little competence to provide palliative care (f = 21)

Hard to encounter the dying patients and the closest ones (f = 8)

Everyone don’t have enough interaction skills to face the dying person (f = 7)

Unpreparedness how to perform in difficult situations (f = 6)

Palliative care can be frightening (f = 5)

The topic is difficult (f = 5)

Difficult to face death (f = 4)

Discrepancy between teaching methods (f = 43)

Too much online learning (f = 18)

Too much self-learning (f = 17)

Too much group work (f = 6)

Classes are too long for such a serious topic (f = 2)

Insufficient structure of education (f = 37)

Fragmented entities do not form an overall picture (f = 16)

Death is hidden from the nursing curriculum (f = 10)

The teaching was carried out too fast (f = 8)

No education obtained because of school change (f = 3)

Shortcomings of competences and clinical learning (f = 35)

Deficiency in provision of palliative care in the working field (f = 11)

Lack of palliative care competences among nursing staff (f = 10)

Have not faced or cared for palliative care patients (f = 7)

The work environment is responsible for too much of the learning (f = 4)

It is difficult to face patients due to lack of prior knowledge (f = 3)

Impractical content of the education (f = 27)

Education does not develop the competences needed in work life (f = 7)

Outdated educational contents (f = 6)

The educational content concentrates too much on the dying phase (f = 5)

Deficiencies in the contents (f = 5)

Insufficient teaching on the care of different diseases and symptoms (f = 4)

Teacher’s insufficient competences on the subject (f = 18)

Teachers lack sufficient competences (f = 10)

Teaching is deficient (f = 8)

  1. f, number of codes (reduced expressions) included in the categories