Table 1.

PICOS

	Inclusion criteria	Exclusion criteria
Population	Medical students	• Main focus on other healthcare professionals and other healthcare students  ○Doctors  ○Nurses, nursing students  ○Allied health workers/ healthcare support staff, allied health students  ○Other non-medical student populations • Main focus on patients/family/friends  ○Patients  ○Caregiver, family, relatives, friends
Intervention/Exposure	Being involved in care of dying patients	• No involvement in care of dying patients  ○No clearly defined patient care experience (e.g. study just explores student attitudes to death/ palliative care)  ○Patient population not dying patients (incl. “geriatrics”, patients without specification that they are dying)  ○Focus on physician assisted suicide/ medical assistance in death/ suicide  ○Focus on organ donation/ transplant  ○Personal experience of death of family/ friend • Teaching activities about dying patients without substantial patient care component:  ○Simulation/ case-based learning/ hypothetical scenario  ○Dissection, prosection, cadaveric studies, autopsy  ○Other classroom-based activity  ○One-off encounter with dying patient, or non-clinical encounter (e.g. half day experience), as opposed to being part of care team for a substantial duration • Animal studies/ Interaction with animals
Comparison
Outcome measures	Impact on medical students’ • Emotions • Attitude • Behavioural changes and adaptations • Personal and professional development • Personal and professional relationships	• Main focus is evaluation and discussion of another outcome:  ○Effectiveness of teaching/ assessment methodology  ○Student’s performance/ knowledge/ skills  ○Patient outcomes  ○Others • Evaluation of societal norms, cultural beliefs, acceptability, ethics
Study design	• English language • No restriction on design (qualitative, quantitative, mixed) • No restriction on type of publication (includes perspectives, opinion pieces, commentary, case reports, grey literature) No restriction on geographical location of study or publication	• Non-English publications without English translation • Unable to retrieve full article