Keywords

ELNEC, Indian palliative care, nurses' knowledge and attitudes of children's pain, nursing education, pain management, pediatric palliative care

 

Authors

  1. Chrastek, Joan "Jody" Ramer DNP, CHPN
  2. Gordon, Phebe DNP, CPNP-PC

Abstract

India is the world's most populous nation with an estimated 1 million new cases of cancer a year, yet less than 1% has access to palliative care. There are excellent centers offering palliative care but not enough to meet the need for education and care. Nurses outnumber physicians in India and are essential in building a strong national palliative care program. This pilot project has aimed to use a culturally adapted version of End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium train-the-trainer and distance mentoring to enable trainees to educate nurses in their institution. A secondary goal was to evaluate the training on nurses' knowledge and attitudes to pediatric palliative care and pain management. The 2-day train-the-trainer End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium seminars, with online mentoring between the sessions, provided palliative care education for 26 nurse trainers from across India. A pretest and posttest showed an increase in knowledge and a positive change in practice. Because of lack of reliable computer access for the nurses, mentoring was conducted online via Facebook. There were good results including multiple trainings across India and important lessons learned from this pilot project to help international training and mentoring projects.