Survey on attitudes toward end-of-life care among third-year students in the faculty of physical therapy: a study across the first and second semesters.
Risa Hamada, Minami Sato, Takayoshi Saito and 2 others
PMID 41835173WHAT IT FOUND
Most third-year physical therapy students said they would want to be told their own diagnosis (88%) and prognosis (88%), but only half would tell a spouse.
Students surveyed after their placement favoured less aggressive end-of-life treatment than those surveyed before.
Key findings
01Almost all students wanted to be told their own diagnosis: 88% wanted the exact name of the illness, 98% wanted disclosure when some explanation was included, and 88% wanted to know how much time they had left.
0295% wanted to be told if early, curable cancer were found in them, but only 51% said they would tell a spouse the name of a terminal illness.
03In the final three months of life, 85% would prefer to be allowed to die naturally and 9% would want life extended by any means; this item differed significantly between the two groups (p<0.01), with students surveyed after their placement choosing less aggressive treatment more often.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The comparison before and after clinical training was not the same students. The 2024 group answered after their placement and the 2025 group before theirs, so a difference between the groups may reflect the two year groups rather than anything the placement did. The authors say that following the same students would be needed to look at change. 31 of the 2024 group did not reply: 67 of 81 students, compared with 77 of 84 in the 2025 group. Those who did not answer may differ from those who did. 85% of the placement sites were hospitals with inpatients and the researchers did not record which student went where, so they cannot say whether the type of placement, rather than the placement itself, explained the differences. All participants came from one campus, and the authors say the findings should not be generalised. The questions asked what students thought they would want in situations most of them had not faced, so these are stated intentions rather than what anyone actually did. The authors note that they could not examine the effect of the cancer rehabilitation course, which they say was rescheduled in 2025.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflict of interest in this work. The text supplied contains no separate statement of who funded the study.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the difference between the two groups as proof that clinical training changes how students think about end-of-life care. The 2024 and 2025 groups were different students answering in different years, not the same people before and after their placement, so nothing in this study shows what caused the difference.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →