The End of Life Nursing Education Nursing Consortium project

In 2000, the City of Hope Medical Center and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) developed the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC)-Core curriculum to educate nurses and other healthcare professionals on end of life care, so that attention to the dying could be improved and their unique needs addressed. Since its inception, over 19,500 nurses and other professionals have attended the ELNEC train-the-trainer courses. Upon course completion, the participants, often nurse educators, returned to their schools, healthcare systems, and communities and introduced the ELNEC content into nursing curricula, annual competencies, and new employee orientation. In 2005, the national ELNEC Project Team concluded that an international curriculum should be developed. The first ELNEC International course was launched in 2006 in Salzburg, Austria. Since that time, trainers have come from 85 countries world-wide, and the curriculum has been translated into eight languages. In 2015, three international courses will be presented: in Beijing, China, Kipkaren, Kenya, and Salzburg, Austria.