INTEGRATION OF PALLIATIVE CARE EDUCATION FOR GRADUATE NURSING STUDENTS

Abstract

Problem Statement: The demand for compassionate, high-quality, evidence-based palliative and end-of-life care is increasing with the rising number of Americans living with multiple serious illnesses and chronic diseases. Unfortunately, a concerning gap in palliative and end-of-life care education has been identified within the majority of medical and nursing schools across the nation.Purpose: This evidence-based curriculum development project aimed to increase graduate nursing students’ perception of their ability to meet national palliative care competencies (G-CARES 2nd ed.). Methods: The author developed six palliative care learning activities that align with the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium’s (ELENC) Graduate curriculum, adapted the activities to the local context in Hawaii, and integrated them into the DNP program curriculum. A cohort of 26 University of Hawaii at Manoa DNP students who participated in the palliative care learning activities was invited to participate in a pre and post-intervention survey measuring levels of perceived competence in palliative care (G-CARES-PC 2.0). Results: There was a 15.9% increase in group mean perceived competence scores from before participating in the learning activities (T0) to after (T1). Discussion: The results of this project align with the literature showing that evidence-based palliative care educational interventions employed through multimodal learning strategies can enhance learning outcomes in palliative care education. The palliative care learning activities developed by the author offer a ready-to-use teaching strategy that can be seamlessly adopted by other graduate nursing programs that seek to assist their students in meeting current national palliative care standards.