Abstract: Objective: To design and conduct a course on "Life Care and Death Education" based on the needs of medical students, and evaluate its effects, with a view to providing a reference for other medical schools in China to carry out life and death education programs. Methods: Taking the "perimortem period" as the time frame, the main line of the course ran through theoretical contents and practical thematic activities. Through the "walking classroom" experiential practical teaching method, the program led the medical students to face the real scenarios of life and death directly, to improve the concepts of caring and to generate caring actions. Results: The course included "life and care" and "death and farewell" two theoretical topics, and "journey of life", "power of care", "self-care", "thoughts on death" and "the day of farewell" five practical topics. The initial practical results of the course were good, and the course was highly positively evaluated by a wide range of stakeholders. Conclusion: The course is reasonably designed, with a clear and explicit implementation plan, which to a certain extent meets the learning needs of medical students for life and death education, promotes the self-knowledge of medical students on life and death issues in the ideology and the self-consciousness of caregiving actions, and has a strong generalizability, and is able to provide suggestions for the development of life and death education courses in various institutions of higher learning.

Key words: medical student; life care; death education; curriculum design; teaching implementation