Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)

Committee Chair

Sharon Starr

Abstract

Many advanced practice nursing programs do not have hospice and palliative care content included in their curricula. Reviewing the literature regarding the nature of hospice and palliative care content in advanced practice nursing curricula revealed few published studies. Rather than a small snapshot of what end-of-life care entails, it is vital to integrate end-of-life care into every aspect taught in advance practice nursing school. The purpose of this thesis was ascertain the nature of hospice and palliative care content contained in advanced practice nursing curricula. A survey was sent to advance practice nursing program directors asking for information related to the nature of hospice and palliative care content in their curricula. The results showed that while most program directors feel hospice and palliative care is important, adding the palliative care content to the current curriculum was challenging. Barriers include, curriculum being to full, faculty’s’ on personal comfort level, lack of interest, or lack of clinical sites. Additional results revealed that while physical pain management is readily included, emotional pain is ignored/neglected in the curriculums. The more education that advanced practice nurses receive in relation to palliative care, the more prepared they feel to care for dying patients.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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