EndWell Advisors

We are aware of a substantial need for more in-depth education in this area
for doctors, nurses and funeral directors, supported by these  recent studies:

 

NURSES

 

. Sufficient knowledge of end-of-life care, positive attitudes, and emotions regarding death and dying are essential criteria for showcasing favorable palliative care educational results to undergraduate nursing students. However, nursing students have negative attitudes toward end-of-life care and know little about it (Çakmak et al, 2025).

 

. While it is imperative that nurses develop coping skills to fully assist their patients and families through the emotional stress of death, it remains quite uncommon for nurses to receive any such training. As a whole, the nursing curriculum tends to overlook any education in the psychosocial needs of families throughout the dying process. (Taheri-Ezbarami et al., 2024).

 

.  Student nurses voiced concerns regarding their feelings of unpreparedness, and lack of confidence and knowledge when dealing with the complexities of palliative and end-of-life care.  (Murnane et al., 2023).

 

. Nearly 85% of senior nursing students felt they did not receive adequate training in end-of-life care in their baccalaureate training (Glover, et al., 2017).

 

. Many nurses feel anxious and ill-equipped to care for dying patients and their families, citing a lack of communication skills during end-of-life care. Due to inadequate training, they frequently feel discontent with the care they are giving and harbor doubts about their ability to provide end-of-life care (Glover et al., 2017).

 

 

 

DOCTORS

. Physicians-in-training feel uncomfortable coping with the grief they experience while delivering end-of-life care, and medical schools offer minimal formal curricular offerings on end of life care…  few studies have explicitly explored when medical students are exposed to death/serious illness and what, if any, informal education they receive on caring for dying patients (Curry et al., 2026).

 

. Grief is ubiquitous in the practice of medicine, yet there is a curious lack of training for physicians about what grief is and how it might impact patient care and their own well-being [85– 87]. Currently, there is a very narrow literature on grief training for physicians. The findings within the limited literature indicated that grief training was most often a voluntary component of the medical curriculum, despite the fact that many patients rely on physicians to help them with their grief (Sikstrom, L., Saikaly, R., Ferguson, G., Mosher, P. J., Bonato, S., & Soklaridis, S. 2019).

 

. A starting point lies in education and stronger institutional support aimed at creating “grief literate” work environments (Breen et al., 2022). Macdonald (2024) writes that “grief literacy starts with the premise that grief is a typical, expected experience” (p. 367) and, as such, should not go unobserved or be stigmatized in the communities where we live and work. In a grief literate workplace, both new and experienced physicians, regardless of specialty, would have access to, and be encouraged to engage in, grief training opportunities (Burm S, Bierer T, Luong V, et al. 2025).

 

. Among responding institutions, structured grief and coping education in the preclinical years appears limited relative to the broader inclusion of EOL education (Vishwanath, v and Plummer MM, 2026).

 

. Most palliative care programs were academic (74%) and had four or fewer fellows (85%). 90% devoted a minority (0%-10%) of their curriculum to grief and bereavement training. Most programs reported at least some program-led grief and bereavement programming (69%); however, 53% endorsed that fellows are not very or not at all involved in this programming (Barlow SA, Price M, Jones CA, Pieper C, Galanos AN, 2024).

 

FUNERAL DIRECTORS

 

While funeral professionals are “expected to provide grief support to families,” they often do so with limited training in bereavement, even while experiencing repeated explore to loss and trauma themselves in their daily work (Jones, A., Smith, R., & Patel, L. 2024).

 

Grief education within death-care professions remains inconsistent and underdeveloped. For example, research in closely related fields such as palliative care indicates that nearly 90% of training programs devote only 0–10% of instructional time to grief and bereavement, with significant variability and lack of standardization across programs. These findings suggest that funeral directors, like many professionals operating in end-of-life contexts, are positioned as informal grief supporters without the structured training necessary to provide comprehensive bereavement care (Jones et al., 2024; Lee & Carter, 2025).

 

. Funeral directors are “among the first professionals to encounter the bereaved” in the hours/days after death

. Funeral directors are often experienced by families as “an intimate friend or counselor” in the immediate aftermath of death

. They engage in meaning-making and emotional processing with bereaved families, yet, “not all funeral directors have adequate education in psychology or counseling”

. Negative or insensitive funeral experiences are associated with long-term grief complications and increased reliance on medical care (Becker CB, 2023)