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Existing death education programs rarely address their specific needs.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Objective<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>To develop and evaluate a tailored death education program for nursing interns.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The study was conducted in two phases: development and refinement of a preliminary program through literature review, interviews, Delphi method, and the first action research cycle; followed by evaluation via a second action research cycle with 48 interns (24 per cycle). Quantitative outcomes were assessed using the Death Attitude Profile-Revised (DAP-R), Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying scale (FATCOD-B), and Coping with Death Scale (CDS) scales, while qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews and participatory observation.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>\n                      After the second cycle, significant improvements (\n                      <jats:italic>P<\/jats:italic>\n                      \u2009&lt;\u20090.05) were observed across all DAP-R dimensions, FATCOD-B total score, and CDS total score. The second cycle yielded significantly greater improvements in most outcomes compared to the first (\n                      <jats:italic>P<\/jats:italic>\n                      \u2009&lt;\u20090.05), except for Escape Acceptance (\n                      <jats:italic>P<\/jats:italic>\n                      \u2009=\u20090.073). Qualitative analysis identified three themes: reflections and recommendations on death education workshops; development of end-of-life communication skills and deepening death awareness and Internalized development of life care and empathy capacity.\n                    <\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Conclusion<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The action research-based program effectively improved nursing interns\u2019 death coping, end-of-life care attitudes, and communication skills, supporting the integration of experiential and reflective pedagogies into palliative care education.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1186\/s12909-025-08495-8","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,7]],"date-time":"2026-01-07T03:16:32Z","timestamp":1767755792000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Construction and implementation of a death education program for nursing interns: an action research study"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"26","author":[{"given":"Jinlong","family":"Liu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xiaofan","family":"Guo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Binbin","family":"Hou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yunjia","family":"Xu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Meirong","family":"Hong","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Nuo","family":"Xu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0659-9371","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Wei","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yun","family":"Xia","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yan","family":"Lou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"8495_CR1","unstructured":"Jing J, Yuan ZY. 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