Palliative care undergraduate education: Do medical and nursing students need more skills in ethical and legal issues?

•Palliative care training is necessary for physicians and nurses.•Physicians need more training in legal-ethical issues in palliative care.•International standards of palliative care must be implemented in education.•The ethical and legal aspects of care must be further developed in universities. This study aimed to analyze the schools that teach ethical and legal aspects within the subject of palliative care in the degrees of medicine and nursing in Spain. Material and Methods: Descriptive Analysis of the palliative care subject and their ethical and legal curricular competencies in the Spanish Nursing and Physicians undergraduate. The training received in legal ethical aspects related to palliative care was compared with the criteria established by the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC). Data sources: The National Conference of Nursing Deans, The National Conference of Spanish Medical Faculty Deans and The Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities databases were searched. Results: Twenty-one universities have an undergraduate in medicine with palliative care in their curricular training explicitly. The degree in nursing is present in fifty-six universities, palliative care is present in 62.5% of the cases. The degrees of nursing and medicine receive approximately the same level of training in ethical and legal aspects of palliative care. Conclusion: The specific training received in ethical and legal issues of palliative care must be improved in medical and nursing to meet the EAPC levels.