Teaching primary palliative nursing care: A model of competency-based education

Holistic care models such as primary palliative care offer individuals a coordinated, interprofessional and compassionate approach in any healthcare setting regardless of condition. Currently, palliative and end-of-life nursing care content is either threaded throughout nursing curricula or not included at all. As a result, new nurses report being inadequately prepared to provide quality palliative or end-of-life care in practice (Parekh de Campos et al., 2022; Lippe, 2019). A team of expert nurse faculty at a large public university utilized the RE-AIM framework to describe the development and implementation of a primary palliative care nursing course. Course objectives incorporate recommended palliative care competencies mapped to the domains and sub-competencies of The Essentials (2021). Classes emphasize opportunities for interactive practice, demonstration of growing competence, and ways to address suffering in patients, organizations, and themselves (ANA, 2017; Rushton et al., 2021; Glover et al., 2025). Course evaluations indicate that the class was well received and valuable to students' learning experience. This article documents the development of a required primary palliative care course in a baccalaureate nursing program and shares recommendations on competency-based teaching and evaluation methods to encourage implementation in other academic nursing settings.