Construction of palliative care training contents in China: a Delphi study

There is a growing emphasis on improving the quality of ending life in China today; however, Chinese professional nursing education in palliative care is limited and inconsistent, and there are no standardized formal training contents. There is a need to construct a related training mode to help Chinese nurses to improve their quality of palliative care. The objective of this study was to construct palliative-care-related training contents for Chinese clinical nurses. A total of 93 training items related to palliative care were developed by literature review. A 36-member expert panel engaged in a 2-round Delphi process to assess the importance of these 93 items and to identify any additional important elements. The expert panelists reached consensus on 69 training items that belonged to 6 modules; these were (1) 8 items for the palliative care overview, (2) 24 items for symptom care, (3) 15 items for psychological care, (4) 13 items for communication and exchange, (5) 5 items for ethics and laws, and (6) 4 items for terminal care. This study formed a 6-module training content through Delphi study, which will provide the basic guideline for Chinese nurses to establish their core competence about palliative care. The 6-module integrated training mode achieved in this study represents the core knowledge and skill that a nurse who provides palliative care in China needs to know; then the nurse can choose any module to get training according to his or her practical needs and availability, totally or separately.