Nurses spend more time with seriously ill patients and their families than any other healthcare provider. Patients and families dealing with a serious illness need palliative care from the time of a life-limiting diagnosis through end of life. In order for nursing students to be prepared to deliver quality palliative care, they must be educated in the critical components of palliative care including pain and symptom management, communication, care of the imminently dying, and bereavement.
As the aging population increases, as patients have more complex illness, and as palliative care programs are growing throughout the US, the demand for undergraduate palliative nursing education is great.
The Cambia Health Foundation has provided $800,000 to fund a three-year project, “Educating Undergraduate Nursing Students in Palliative Care,” to meet this demand. There is a great need to make this education available to all schools of nursing, especially those in rural areas with limited access to palliative care resources. The Principal Investigator (PI) of this project is Betty Ferrell, PhD, MA, FAAN, FPCN, Director of Nursing Research and Education at City of Hope Medical Center (Duarte, CA) and PI of the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) Project. Dr. Ferrell is renowned for her advancement of palliative nursing nationally and internationally.
One of the key components of this Cambia-funded project was the revision and updating of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) 1998 Peaceful Death document, which has served as the foundational document guiding undergraduate end-of-life nursing education for 18 years. The Peaceful Death document has been used in the development of various ELNEC curricula, which have been presented to over 20,700 nursing students, faculty, professional development educators, and clinicians in every state and in 88 countries world-wide and has been translated into 8 languages. In October, 2015, a group of 25 outstanding national nursing faculty and leaders in palliative care came together in Portland, OR to update the Peaceful Death document, now known as the new Palliative CARES (Competencies And Recommendations for Educating undergraduate nursing Students) document, to incorporate care for those with serious illness as well as those at end of life.
We are proud to announce that the AACN Board of Directors has unanimously endorsed the CARES document, which will provide Schools of Nursing across the nation with competencies and recommendations for educating future nurses to provide quality palliative care. This document is the guiding framework for the integration of palliative care education into all undergraduate nursing programs in the U.S. The CARES document provides the historical perspective of palliative care nursing education, outlines the current status of educational needs in undergraduate nursing programs, and most importantly, identifies 17 palliative care competencies that student nurses should achieve before graduation. In addition, recommendations for incorporating the new palliative care competencies into nursing courses are provided in the document, along with their alignment within the AACN Essentials of Baccalaureate Education.
In an effort to assist nursing faculty in meeting these new competencies, the Cambia Health Foundation’s funding provides for the development of an interactive online undergraduate ELNEC curriculum. This new ELNEC curriculum is currently being designed with the support of Relias Learning Management. The new ELNEC undergraduate curriculum will be available to all 92 nursing programs in the grant-funded project states (Idaho, Utah, Oregon and Washington), beginning in January 2017. Plans are underway for dissemination to nursing schools in the remaining 46 states, for a nominal fee.
“Cambia Health Foundation is pleased to invest in this innovative initiative to help increase access to palliative care in rural areas, standardize palliative care nursing nationally, and strengthen the palliative care workforce nationwide,” said Elyse Salend, Cambia Health Foundation program officer.
As the aging population increases, as patients have more complex illness, and as palliative care programs are growing throughout the US, the demand for undergraduate palliative nursing education is great.
The Cambia Health Foundation has provided $800,000 to fund a three-year project, “Educating Undergraduate Nursing Students in Palliative Care,” to meet this demand. There is a great need to make this education available to all schools of nursing, especially those in rural areas with limited access to palliative care resources. The Principal Investigator (PI) of this project is Betty Ferrell, PhD, MA, FAAN, FPCN, Director of Nursing Research and Education at City of Hope Medical Center (Duarte, CA) and PI of the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) Project. Dr. Ferrell is renowned for her advancement of palliative nursing nationally and internationally.
One of the key components of this Cambia-funded project was the revision and updating of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) 1998 Peaceful Death document, which has served as the foundational document guiding undergraduate end-of-life nursing education for 18 years. The Peaceful Death document has been used in the development of various ELNEC curricula, which have been presented to over 20,700 nursing students, faculty, professional development educators, and clinicians in every state and in 88 countries world-wide and has been translated into 8 languages. In October, 2015, a group of 25 outstanding national nursing faculty and leaders in palliative care came together in Portland, OR to update the Peaceful Death document, now known as the new Palliative CARES (Competencies And Recommendations for Educating undergraduate nursing Students) document, to incorporate care for those with serious illness as well as those at end of life.
We are proud to announce that the AACN Board of Directors has unanimously endorsed the CARES document, which will provide Schools of Nursing across the nation with competencies and recommendations for educating future nurses to provide quality palliative care. This document is the guiding framework for the integration of palliative care education into all undergraduate nursing programs in the U.S. The CARES document provides the historical perspective of palliative care nursing education, outlines the current status of educational needs in undergraduate nursing programs, and most importantly, identifies 17 palliative care competencies that student nurses should achieve before graduation. In addition, recommendations for incorporating the new palliative care competencies into nursing courses are provided in the document, along with their alignment within the AACN Essentials of Baccalaureate Education.
In an effort to assist nursing faculty in meeting these new competencies, the Cambia Health Foundation’s funding provides for the development of an interactive online undergraduate ELNEC curriculum. This new ELNEC curriculum is currently being designed with the support of Relias Learning Management. The new ELNEC undergraduate curriculum will be available to all 92 nursing programs in the grant-funded project states (Idaho, Utah, Oregon and Washington), beginning in January 2017. Plans are underway for dissemination to nursing schools in the remaining 46 states, for a nominal fee.
“Cambia Health Foundation is pleased to invest in this innovative initiative to help increase access to palliative care in rural areas, standardize palliative care nursing nationally, and strengthen the palliative care workforce nationwide,” said Elyse Salend, Cambia Health Foundation program officer.