An educational initiative to improve medical student awareness about brain death

•Medical student knowledge about brain death is limited.•Simulation can be used to improve medical student knowledge about brain death.•Simulation can improve medical student comfort communicating about brain death.•Incorporation of simulation in undergraduate medical education is high-yield. Medical student knowledge about brain death determination is limited. We describe an educational initiative to improve medical student awareness about brain death and assess the impact of this initiative. Beginning in July 2016, students at our medical school were required to attend a 90-min brain death didactic and simulation session during their neurology clerkship. Students completed a test immediately before and after participating in the initiative. Of the 145 students who participated in this educational initiative between July 2016 and June 2017, 124 (86%) consented to have their data used for research purposes as part of a medical education registry. Students correctly answered a median of 53% of questions (IQR 47–58%) on the pretest and 86% of questions (IQR 78–89%) on the posttest (p