State of Palliative and End-of-Life Care Curricula in Pre-Licensure Nursing Education

The Institute of Medicine (2015) reported that hospice and palliative care are generally not taught in medical or nursing schools. The aim of the study was to discover the palliative care self-competence of faculty who teach in pre-licensure nursing programs, determine if the "Competencies and Recommendations for Educating Nursing Students" ("CARES") (AACN, 2016) are utilized within nursing programs, and determine if the End-of-Life Care Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC, 2022) is used to deliver the content. A null hypothesis was offered that there is no significant relationship between the faculty participants' reported palliative care self-competence and the presence of the palliative care competencies in pre-licensure nursing programs in the U.S. The shared theory of palliative care by Desbiens et al. (2012) was applied. Surveys (1710) were emailed to pre-licensure accredited nursing programs using a systematic sampling plan, yielding a 4.3% response rate. Participants (N = 73) stated that they possessed the ability to meet the 17 palliative care competencies, but only ten of the 17 competencies were included in at least 75% of the programs. Moreover, only 15% of programs reported using the ELNEC curriculum to deliver the palliative care competencies. The null hypothesis was rejected after testing revealed a weak to moderate positive relationship between the participants' reported palliative care self-competence and the presence of palliative care competencies in pre-licensure nursing. The results suggest that faculty need staff development to educate nursing students and display an urgency to re-invigorate the promotion of palliative and end-of-life care nursing education for faculty and students. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]