An NPR article written by Blake Farmer explores a university’s way to improve end of life care for nursing students. The new technology they are using are actors portraying death and verbal cues that students usually do not hear with robot simulations. They also use actors to emulate dying patient’s family members. Nurses often have to confront patients and their family members with bad news, so by using actors as an education tool, hopefully students focus on how to communicate bad news with more empathy and compassion. The NPR article mentioned studies were conducted that conclude many nurses feel unprepared to give end-of life care. Because I am a nursing student who will probably give end of life or palliative care, I am curious to know where the educational gaps are for end of life care in nursing?
In 2011, the Department of Health Administration and Nursing at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center sought to find gaps in end of life care in continuing education. They surveyed 2,530 nurses from the Oncology Nursing Society among four states, who had been interviewed before in 1990 where the nurses were asked open ended questions about gaps in education for end of life care. The second most current survey asked fewer open ended questions. For example, they ranked end of life core practices from 1-12 of how important they are in nursing practices. Each nurse was mailed a survey and emailed a survey that was identical to the mailed one. Out of 2,530 surveys, only 714 were deemed acceptable to use in analysis, therefore limiting the sample size. Surveys were conducted and found that “twenty-five percent of the respondents do not believe they are adequately prepared to effectively care for a dying patient”( White 2011). Symptom management and how to talk to patients and family members was rated one on the top competency inadequacies. Symptom management among what comprises palliative care, and communication about death and dying are some core companies under ‘end of life care’.
This study tries to find the educational gaps in end of life care education by surveys to a limited population that are all made up of oncology nurses.This study did not break down ages or experience levels, and instead gave the average age and experience number. The average age for people conducted in this survey is 48.5 years, and the average number of years since becoming a nurse was 21.3 years. These statistics make sense, because they were re-conducting a survey done to the same population a decade later. The population of nurses in this study were of all different ages and experience levels, which contributed to different rankings of importance for the top three core competencies. For example, nurses in an older generation were more likely to select the meaning of palliative care more important than symptom management. Because the surveys were only conducted on nurses who had already been practicing, the study did not address the educational gap in end of life care for student nurses, as the NPR article suggests. The findings of the study explained there may be educational gaps in work learning settings, because the nurses that said they are confident in their end of life abilities may have been educated outside the workplace, such as conferences. However where the nurses received education on this subject was not measured, so it would be hard to conclude where the gaps in education are, based on these limitations. This study gave a view into where there might be gaps in education for oncology nurses already practicing based on age and speciality level, however because of the small sample population and how specific this study is, it does not represent where educational gaps might take place in the nursing field.
Works cited:
White, K. R., & Coyne, P. J. (2011). Nurses’ Perceptions of Educational Gaps in Delivering End-of-Life Care. Oncology Nursing Forum, 38(6), 711–717. doi:10.1188/11.onf.711-717
