25 Years of Progress: ELNEC and AACN Transforming Palliative Nursing Education

In the year 2000, leaders with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing joined with Dr. Betty Ferrell and her colleagues at City of Hope to address gaps in how nurses are educated to care for patients at the end-of-life and their families. The collaborators launched a far-reaching train-the-trainer initiative, the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC), which resulted in competencies, guidelines, and nursing curricula developed to prepare nurses to provide evidence-based, skilled, and compassionate palliative care. The 25th anniversary of ELNEC celebrates the tremendous efforts of the stakeholders in academia and practice, who share a commitment to transforming nursing education and elevating health care across settings. To date, more than 1.7 million nurses have been educated with the ELNEC curriculum, and more than 1200 undergraduate and 440 graduate schools of nursing offer ELNEC training in palliative end-of-life care. The remarkable academic-practice partnership at the heart of ELNEC has dramatically changed nursing care for patients with serious illnesses and their families in the United States and globally.