Palliative Care Is Growing Across the US

Future Employers of Your Students Want to Hire Nurses Prepared to Provide This Care

According to a 2019 report from the Center to Advance Palliative Care, 12 million adults and 400,000 children residing in America today are living with a serious illness (cancer, heart and/or kidney disease, dementia, etc).  There has never been a more critical time for nursing students to be prepared to meet the challenges that lie ahead.  Several states have passed laws for continuing education requirements in pain management, safe opioid prescribing, and palliative care, because they recognize the importance of nursing for patients who live with a serious, complex illness. There are also private health plans requiring clinician training in primary palliative care in an effort to promote hospital quality.  Today, 94% of hospitals across the United States with 300 beds or more have a palliative care team; future employers need to hire new nurses who are educated in this care. 

Need help in preparing your students to meet these challenges?  Check out the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) Undergraduate and ELNEC-Graduate online programs.  Six one-hour modules will provide your students with the education needed to begin the work of caring for these seriously ill patients and families. Today, 380 schools of nursing are using the ELNEC-Undergraduate curriculum and over 33,500 undergraduate nursing students have completed all 6 modules. The ELNEC-Graduate curriculum was released September 1, 2019 and 50 graduate nursing students have completed all 6 modules.  Both online curricula were developed from the palliative care competencies endorsed by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Board of Directors. For more information about this project, contact Andrea Garcia-Ortiz at elnec@coh.org.