End-of-life care in the Dutch medical curricula 45 which would make our assessment an overly optimistic or overly pessimistic view of the current situation of ELC education. Thirdly, since the curricula are always in development, this review provides a cross-sectional view that possibly contains parts of old and new curricula. Fourthly, some respondents reported that the questionnaire was difficult to fill in, because ELC education was often part of education about other topics. Therefore, we opted to discuss the results with the respondents using telephone interviews, which was done in almost all cases. Although this research shows the current situation of ELC education in the Netherlands regarding the national blueprint and the curricula, no studies have been performed to assess the individual level of the skills and knowledge of the students. Further research should therefore focus on the personal experience and knowledge regarding ELC of the medical students themselves. Other international studies also studied to what extent future doctors feel prepared to provide ELC. This will give further indications on how to better prepare medical students for their future medical practice. At the time of writing this article, the PASEMECO project of Maastricht University is assessing students’ skills and knowledge regarding ELC and developing and implementing e‑learning on palliative care in the Dutch medical curricula. CONCLUSION Our study shows that ELC is sparsely described in the Dutch blueprint for medical education: it is not explicitly mentioned as a compulsory subject and not all domains that are considered essential knowledge and skills by the international standards are represented in the national blueprint. This has consequences for the planning and execution of the medical curricula at the faculty level. First of all, ELC was part of the formal curricula, but none of the faculties taught all the subjects that were considered a necessary basis for ELC practice. Moreover, ELC was not offered as an individual course in any of the Dutch bachelor and master medical curricula. Secondly, none of the medical faculties taught the five domains on ELC and met international criteria. To improve ELC education, we recommend addition of all the ELC domains that are internationally accepted to the national blueprint. Besides, we recommend medical faculties to offer a separate compulsory course on ELC to educate and prepare their future doctors properly, so that people in an ageing world can rely on young medical doctors who feel ready and well-informed when providing appropriate ELC. 2
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