Objection Researching the medical students' cognition of death and palliative medicine as well as their willingness to learn the concepts of it and related knowledge, which can offer a reference to the students’ learning the relevant curriculum.Method By using the questionnaire survey form,570 medical students of NanJing Medical University accepted the questionnaires on the social platform called WeChat.The content involves the basic information of the clinicians, familiarity to death and relieve medical concepts, education and training about the known , the willingness of further study as well as the attitude towards the dying patients, etc., using descriptive statistics, single factor variance analysis and other methods to analyze clinical and nursing and other related to perceptions of death and soothing medicine. Results A total of 504 valid questionnaires were collected, with an effective recovery rate of 88.4%. There were 50 students (9.9%) who had received death-related education or training, including 34 clinical students (68.0%).377(74.8%) had experienced the death of a loved one;310 patients had experience dealing with dying patients, 168 of whom were clinical students (54.2%). 47 (9.3%) had heard about how to deal with or care for patients with a limited life span; 291 (57.8%) believed soothing medicine training courses were needed; Material in read death (2 = 3.817, P = 0.023), and hope to further understand death related information (2 = 5.377, P = 0.005), understand the soothing medical concept (2 = 4.473, P = 0.012) and the concept of end-stage disease (2 = 9.672, P = 0.000), and think that euthanasia is equal to relieve medical (2 = 10.289, P = 0.000), clinical, nursing, and other professional significant difference exists among three groups of students.Conclusion Death and palliative medicine courses should be set up in medical students' education which aim to strengthen their cognition of palliative medicine and enhance their practical ability of palliative treatment. And, in the meantime, the further education and training about the palliative medicine and death should be seriously considered.