Expanding palliative care nursing education in California: the ELNEC Geriatric project.

In the past decade, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's 2002 report Means to a Better End: A Report on Dying in America Today and other studies brought attention to deficiencies in care of the dying in the USA. Palliative care's mandate is to promote a 'good death' through expert symptom management and compassionate care that addresses the psychosocial needs and dignity of persons at the end of life. The End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) Geriatric 'train-the-trainer' project was launched in 2007 to increase the knowledge and educational skills of nurses and unlicensed staff providing end-of-life care for older adults in nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, long-term care, and hospices. From 2007 through 2009, 351 California-based nurses and nursing home staff attended one of four ELNEC Geriatric courses. This paper describes programme development, implementation, follow-up evaluations, and examples of participants' use of the ELNEC Geriatric curriculum.

End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium. Geriatric Training Program: improving palliative care in community geriatric care settings.

Recent studies of end-of-life care in nursing homes and other long-term care settings point to a significant need to improve care. The End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC)-Geriatric Training Program is an important educational initiative to advance palliative care and end-of-life education for licensed nurses and nursing assistants. The ELNEC-Geriatric Training Program prepares nurses as educators and leaders to improve the quality of end-of-life care in geriatric care facilities. This article presents evaluation data from the 2007 pilot ELNEC-Geriatric Training Program and follow-up evaluation of the "train-the-trainer" model to disseminate comprehensive palliative care education in geriatric settings.

The preparation of oncology nurses in palliative care.

OBJECTIVES: To address the opportunities for oncology nurses to prepare for and provide palliative care support to cancer patients and families. DATA SOURCES: A review of the literature as well as synthesis of the experiences of the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium over the past 10 years (2000-2010) were considered in summarizing implications for palliative care education in oncology. CONCLUSION: Cancer patients and their families across the cancer trajectory experience serious physical and psychosocial symptoms and spiritual concerns. Oncology nurses have contributed to the evolving field of palliative care, and the continued education of oncology nurses in this specialty is essential to quality care for patients and families IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE: The need for palliative care in oncology will intensify in the future, and effective strategies for education are necessary to prepare the nursing workforce for the effective and compassionate care that patients and families deserve.

Statewide efforts in promoting palliative care.

BACKGROUND: In 2002, Means to a Better End: A Report of Dying in America Today, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) report, was issued that included grades for each state on their ability to provide end-of-life care. Most states, including California, rated as mediocre and the report called for extensive efforts at a state level to improve the quality of palliative care. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this paper is to describe implementation and evaluation of a comprehensive statewide effort to improve end-of-life care education for 350 California nurses as an example of state-level change as recommended by the RWJF report. DESIGN: Funded by the Archstone Foundation (Long Beach, CA), this effort was based on the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) "Train the Trainer" project, a national educational initiative to improve end-of-life care by providing training to nurses (www.aacn.nche.edu/ELNEC). ELNEC is a partnership between City of Hope, Duarte, California, and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, Inc., Washington D.C. SETTING/SUBJECTS: Three courses were held from October 2005 through March 2007 in which 350 nurses from various clinical settings across California applied and participated in the training program. MEASUREMENTS/RESULTS/CONCLUSION: In order to be accepted in the course, participants agreed to follow-up for 12 months postcourse in order to evaluate the impact of their attendance on their institutions' commitment to palliative care. This paper reports findings from this California effort as an example of a state-intensive effort and to encourage other statewide palliative care initiatives in order to improve care for the dying.