Enhancing end-of-life education for new graduates

Abstract

Background and objective: Nurses frequently report insufficient preparation to provide high-quality end-of-life (EOL) care, despite an increasing number of patients requiring comfort-focused interventions. At a community hospital in Connecticut, formal EOL education is limited to a specialty unit, resulting in newly graduated nurses on other inpatient units caring for patients at the end of life without standardized training. The purpose of this evidence-based practice project was to evaluate the impact of integrating the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) curriculum into a new graduate nurse residency program on nurses’ self-perceived knowledge of caring for patients receiving comfort measures. Methods: A single-group, quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design was used. New graduate nurses on inpatient medical units completed the End-of-Life Care Questionnaire (EOL-Q) before and after completing the online ELNEC course. Descriptive statistics and Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used to analyze changes in self-perceived knowledge. Results: Eight nurses completed the post-intervention assessment. Median scores increased across all four EOL-Q factors and across the knowledge, attitude, and management subdomains. Statistically significant improvements were observed in advance care planning (p = .035), symptom management (p = .030), emotional and spiritual support (p = .022), knowledge (p = .022), attitude (p = .035), and management (p = .021). Communication and continuity of care improved but did not reach statistical significance (p = .055). Conclusions: Findings suggest that integrating the ELNEC curriculum into a new graduate nurse residency program may improve nurses’ self-perceived knowledge and attitudes related to end-of-life care. Given the small sample size, single-site setting, and unmatched pretest–posttest design, findings should be interpreted as preliminary.