End-of-life nursing education consortium: 5 years of educating graduate nursing faculty in excellent palliative care.

Since January 2001, over 4,500 nurses, representing all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, have attended 1 of 50 national End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) train-the-trainer courses. Of the 4,500 nurses who have attended a national ELNEC course, 300 graduate nursing faculty members participated in one of four National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant-funded courses, ELNEC-Graduate, that focused on the needs of faculty teaching graduate nursing students. These nursing faculty members represent every state in the United States and 278 (63%) out of 438 graduate nursing programs. The final NCI-funded ELNEC-Graduate course took place in June 2006. Due to the continued need for this education, additional courses were offered at the 2007 American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) master's conference, and another course was presented in February 2008 at the same AACN meeting. The purpose of this paper is to describe the history of the ELNEC-Graduate project and to demonstrate its impact in empowering graduate nursing faculty members to improve their teaching methods and strategies regarding end-of-life (EOL)/palliative care education. Because of ELNEC-Graduate, graduate nursing faculty members are better equipped to provide this education to their students so that these students are prepared to care for patients and their families experiencing EOL/palliative care issues.

Policy perspectives of major nursing organizations. Interview by David M. Keepnews.

Understanding the roles of interest groups is an important element of examining policy change. There are a number of interest groups that affect the policy environment for nursing and that shape the profession's impact on health policy. This article is the first of a series featuring interviews with executive directors/chief executive officers of three major nursing organizations, focusing on their policy priorities and how these priorities are determined. The three organizations featured in this article are the American Nurses Association (ANA), the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) and the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN).