Palliative Care for Everyone: Insider Tips for Teaching Primary Palliative Care to RNs and APRNs (FR453)

Abstract

•Describe the common barriers to providing primary palliative care education to RNs and APRNs.•Identify existing resources for providing primary palliative care education to RNs and APRNs.•Examine some novel examples of primary palliative care education initiatives implemented by Palliative Care APRN specialists in their clinical practice. Primary palliative care education is a widely embraced solution to the increasing demand for palliative care in the midst of a specialty clinician shortage. RNs and APRNs are in a unique position to incorporate palliative principles into the management of patients with serious illness. In fact, current guidelines from national organizations recommend the integration of palliative care into routine nursing practice across all specialties and practice settings. Yet formal training and education in palliative care is not uniformly integrated in undergraduate or graduate-level nursing curricula. In the clinical setting, many RNs and APRNs remain unaware of available resources for primary palliative care education. They report having inadequate skills to address their patients' unmet needs. In addition, they may experience distress related to the care of patients who are suffering or whose wishes have not been honored. In order to ensure every patient has access to palliative care, RNs and APRNs must receive comprehensive, structured primary palliative care education. Palliative care specialists should play a key role in providing educational support for their RN and APRN colleagues in every specialty. This presentation provides an overview of the need for standardized primary palliative care training in the field of nursing, while exploring both current and ideal future training models. It also offers a review of existing educational resources that may be utilized by specialists to build primary palliative care training initiatives on the local and systems levels. Finally, palliative care APRN specialists will offer insider tips and share real-world examples of their own successes and challenges in creating models of primary palliative care.