The Massachusetts Model: A Roadmap for Advancing Serious Illness Care in Nursing Education

The Massachusetts Nursing Task Force was established to promote the integration of primary palliative nursing competencies in nursing education across the state. A statewide survey revealed that only 23% of baccalaureate nursing programs felt their students were well-prepared in this area. Moreover, there was limited integration of evidence-based resources due to curriculum constraints, lack of faculty time, and financial limitations. To address these challenges, the Massachusetts Nursing Task Force implemented a 2-pronged approach: an End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium train-the-trainer workshop for faculty and the development of a free, peer-reviewed online nursing resource library aligned with national competencies. The resource library, launched in 2023 and grounded in Kolcaba's Holistic Theory of Comfort, offers diverse materials to facilitate the incorporation of palliative nursing education into existing curricula. Future goals include wider dissemination of these resources, improved assessment of palliative nursing in curricula and practice settings, and expansion of this initiative beyond the state level to advance palliative nursing knowledge and practice.