Promoting Palliative Care Internationally: Building Leaders to Promote Education, Practice, and Advocacy.

In February 2000, nine nursing educators, practitioners, and researchers met in Nashville, Tennessee, to develop a palliative care curriculum specifically for nurses. The following month, 22 advisors from nursing organizations across the United States convened in Washington, DC to review the recommended curriculum development and dissemination plans for end-of-life care throughout nursing schools, hospitals, hospices, home care, and geriatric settings. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided funding for curriculum and competency development and for six national train-the-trainer courses to be held from 2001 to 2003. The curriculum entitled the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium was designed to meet the needs of nurses caring for patients with serious and complex illnesses at the end of their lives. This work, beginning in 2000 with the development of the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium curriculum, has been taught in every state across America and in 91 countries around the world and has been translated into eight languages. Over 21,400 trainers have returned to their institutions and educated over 642,000 colleagues.