Congress Abstracts 2003

20

END-OF-LIFE EDUCATION FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION PROVIDERS. Rose Virani, RNC, MHA, OCN^®, Betty Ferrell, PHD, FAAN, and Marcia Grant, DNSc, FAAN, City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, CA.

Nursing research has demonstrated that formal education has not prepared practicing nurses to provide optimum EOL care; yet, care of patients at the EOL is contingent on adequate preparation of nurses. The End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) is a unified effort to address this need. The purpose of this Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded project (2000–2003) is to develop and implement a comprehensive national effort to improve EOL care by nurses through collaboration between the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) and City of Hope (COH). Based on the AACN “Peaceful Death” document, the ELNEC curriculum focuses on nine EOL core areas with detailed teaching materials to integrate the content from these nine areas into nursing curricula and clinical practices. This project is a synthesis of research and knowledge in EOL care and is intended to assist clinical nurses with implementing scientifically-based care in practice. Two national training courses held in 2001 and 2002 focused on CE Approvers. This presentation will provide evaluation data from 200 participants in clinical settings (i.e., hospitals, home, cancer centers). Results are derived from the course evaluations, pre-assessment surveys with comparison at 12 month follow-up post course, and participant goals conducted pre-course, immediate post-course, and at 6- and 12-month intervals post course. Preliminary pre-course results have demonstrated that the participants feel that CE programs (x = 5.99) and CE educators (x = 6.93) are moderately effective in teaching EOL (scale of 1 = not effective to 10 = very effective). EOL is perceived as very important to basic nursing education (x = 9.51) (scale of 1 = not important to 10 = very important). Barriers cited to EOL content and implementation in CE programs included time, priority, budget constraints, physician and administrative support, staff fears and anxieties, and lack of clinical experience. This national organized effort is a major step toward preparing clinical nurses and strengthening nursing knowledge in EOL care to improve care of the dying.