ELNEC Curricula
The first APRN course, supported by Cambia Health Foundation, debuted April 4 & 5, 2013 in Anaheim, CA with 115 APRN participants, representing 26 states. There are many palliative care teams across the US being led by APRNs and they are key team members who exemplify commitment to their varied roles in not only leadership, but practice, education, and research. Participants receive advanced education in pain and symptom assessment/management and communication. Additional education in palliative care-related finances, budgets, quality improvement, education, and leadership are also provided. Participants can choose to attend one of 2 tracks—adult-or pediatric-focused care.
View more information on current ELNEC APRN national course offerings or to register.
This project provides monthly webinars. Slides are available below for your review.
June, 2018: Pain Management During an Opioid Crisis. Presented by Judy Paice, PhD, RN, FAAN
July, 2018: Legacy Work: Transforming Grief at the Bedside. Presented by Jessica Bullington, BSN, CHPN
- Legacy Kit Instructions
- Family Memory Stone Instructions, Assembly, Sample
- Legacy Work Bookmarks
- Helen Keller and Tree of Life Bookmarks
August, 2018: ELNEC Oncology APRN Cohort 1.
September, 2018: Thriving in a Stressful and Sometimes Traumatic Environment: Taking Responsibility to Promote and Adapt Excellent Self-Care. Presented by Pam Malloy, MN, RN, FPCN, FAAN
November, 2018: Clinical Practice Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care – 4th Edition: Why They Are Important to Oncology Primary Palliative Care APRNs. Presented by Betty Ferrell, PhD, RN, MA, CHPN, FPCN, FAAN
January, 2019: Reflections of Advance Practice Palliative Nursing Across the US. Presented by Connie Dahlin, MSN, ANP-BC, ACHPN, FPCN, FAAN.
February 2019: How to Change a Culture to Make it Easier to Promote and Provide Palliative Care. Presented by Patrick Coyne, MSN, ACHPN, ACNS-BC, FPCN, FAAN
March 2019: Assisting Children Whose Family Member is Dying of Cancer: Opportunities for Primary Palliative Nurses. Presented by Cheryl Thaxton, DNP, CPNP, FNP-BC, CHPPN, ACHPN, FPCN, and Christine Knefley, MS, CCLS
April 2019: Updates From 2nd Cohort: Improvements, Challenges/Opportunities, and Lessons Learned
June 2019: Palliative Care and Cancer Survivorship: They Work Together
Presented by Denice Economou, PhD, RN, CHPN
July 2019: Palliative Care Concerns in the Older Adult.
Presented by Leana Chien MSN, RN, GCNS-BC, GNP-BC
August 2019: Thriving in a Stressful and Sometimes Traumatic Environment: Taking Responsibility to Promote and Adapt Excellent Self-Care. Presented by Pam Malloy, MN, RN, FPCN, FAAN
September 2019: Legacy Work: Transforming Grief at the Bedside. Presented by Jessica Bullington, BSN, CHPN
- Legacy Kit Instructions
- Family Memory Stone Instructions, Assembly, Sample
- Legacy Work Bookmarks
- Helen Keller and Tree of Life Bookmarks
October 2019: Cancer Pain Control During an Opioid Epidemic. Presented by Judith A. Paice, PhD, RN, FAAN
Approximately 18,000 nurses and other healthcare professionals from diverse clinical backgrounds have been trained in this curriculum. ELNEC Core is used to train staff nurses, advanced practice nurses, undergraduate and graduate nursing faculty, administrators, and researchers who work in acute care settings (i.e. medical-surgical and oncology units), clinics, homecare, hospice, and palliative care settings. Several national ELNEC Core courses are held each year.
View more information on current ELNEC-Core national course offerings or to register.
This course was developed for nurses who work in intensive care, coronary care, burn and dialysis units, emergency departments, and other clinical areas encompassing critical care. At least two national train-the-trainer critical care courses are offered around the country annually.
View more information on current ELNEC Critical Care national course offerings or to register
ELNEC Communication was developed in 2018. The area of communication has been a key part of the ELNEC curriculum since the project began in 2001. However, the national ELNEC Project Team receives consistent feedback that more emphasis is needed on this important topic, communication. The new ELNEC Communication curriculum is based on the National Consensus Project (NCP) Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care with separate modules developed to address communication in each of the eight NCP domains: structures and processes of care, physical aspects, psychological, social, spiritual, cultural, end of life care and ethical aspects of care. It is also an intraprofessional curriculum and will be presented as a train-the-trainer course with extensive teaching materials, slides and lab sessions designed to facilitate teaching communication principles as well as application through skills based learning.
With life expectancy increasing and the numbers of aging adults growing each day, the healthcare system in the U.S. and abroad requires nurses to be educated in meeting the palliative care needs of older adults. The ELNEC Geriatric curriculum addresses the specific educational needs of nurses who provide care to people who reside at home or are being cared for in community-based settings, such as assisted living, nursing communities, skilled nursing settings, hospices, or ambulatory care clinics. Each module provides essential elements of geriatric palliative care that are easy to teach and implement across community care settings. Unique features of the course include a focused module on geriatric palliative care that elaborates on physiologic changes in older adults, medications, and chronic conditions using a person-centered approach. Geriatric syndromes are integrated across all 9 modules. Undergraduate and graduate nursing faculty report that its supplemental teaching materials and case studies are invaluable to their current lectures. In addition, the curriculum includes supplemental teaching strategies for educating unlicensed personnel that work with geriatric patients and their families.
View more information on current ELNEC Geriatric national course offerings or to register.
ELNEC Pediatric Palliative Care was designed and developed by 20 pediatric palliative care experts and piloted in 2003. Each year, at least three national train-the-trainer pediatric palliative care courses are offered across the US. The curriculum also includes perinatal and neonatal content.
View more information on current ELNEC Pediatric national course offerings or to register.
ELNEC training courses (Core, Critical Care, Geriatric, and Pediatric) are available online through Relias. https://www.relias.com/elnec
Cambia Health Foundation (CHF) has provided funding to develop an innovative ELNEC online curriculum to integrate palliative care in undergraduate nursing education across the nation. The online format makes the ELNEC curriculum available to students in rural areas and helps standardize palliative care nursing education. Through the generous funding of CHF, the online ELNEC curriculum, available through Relias, is provided to all nursing programs for a nominal fee, $29 per student. The new online curriculum debuted in January, 2017.
Available for your Institution’s bookstore: ELNEC Undergraduate Online Curriculum. Email Relias at reliasacademy@reliaslearning.com if you would like to add the ELNEC Undergraduate Curriculum to your bookstore.
For more information on ELNEC Undergraduate, please elnec.academy.reliaslearning.com or contact Dr. Polly Mazanec, ELNEC Undergraduate Project Director at pmm@case.edu.
View this article for further information about ELNEC Graduate.
To review the Graduate Palliative Care Competencies, adopted by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing in January, 2019, view this statement.
When launched in 2000, the ELNEC project initially was focused on providing palliative care education in the United States. In the years following the project’s launch, many ELNEC trainers have traveled internationally to provide palliative care training to nurses and other healthcare providers throughout the world. Currently, ELNEC trainers and faculty have traveled to 100 countries on six of the seven continents. Many trainers have provided ELNEC educational courses internationally, while others have gone as consultants to work with educators, health administrators, and community leaders to improve care of the seriously ill in other countries. It is estimated that over 27,500 nurses and other healthcare providers have received ELNEC training internationally. Some are working on translating ELNEC into other languages and adapting it to increase the relevance to other cultures. For example, ELNEC has already been translated into Russian, Romanian, Czech, and Albanian, where nursing administrators and faculty are using the curriculum in Eastern Europe. ELNEC has also been translated into Spanish (Core and Pediatric Palliative Care versions) and is being widely disseminated in Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America. ELNEC Hindi is being developed to reach nurses throughout India. ELNEC Japanese, ELNEC Korean, ELNEC Chinese, and ELNEC German are also available.
Building palliative care leaders has been a major emphasis of the national ELNEC team. To date, 50+ nurses and physicians have attended leadership courses in Romania (2014 & 2015), Kenya (2016), and Hong Kong (2016). View more information on ELNEC trainers’ efforts to disseminate ELNEC internationally and for a listing of efforts by country.
The ELNEC For Veterans curriculum is designed to meet the unique needs of nurses caring for Veterans with serious illness. The expertise gained at these courses promises to improve the quality of palliative care for thousands of Veterans in 153 Department of Veterans’ Affairs Medical Centers across the U.S. To date, six national train-the-trainer Veterans courses have been held across the U.S. with 745 nurses and other members of the interdisciplinary team in attendance, representing over 200 VA facilities (i.e. medical centers, clinics, CLC’s, etc). Community partners with VA (i.e. homecare, hospice, etc.) have attended these courses, too, as they care for many Veterans in various community settings.