Research Article
Palliative Care Education: Does it Influence Future Practice
Tony Bush*RMIT University, Nursing & Midwifery, PO Box 71, Bundoora, Victoria 3083, Australia
- *Corresponding Author:
- Tony Bush
RMIT University, Nursing & Midwifery
PO Box 71, Bundoora, Victoria 3083, Australia
E-mail: tony.bush@rmit.edu.au
Received date: December 07, 2011; Accepted date: April 21, 2012; Published date: April 24, 2012
Citation: Bush T (2012) Palliative Care Education: Does it Influence Future Practice. J Palliative Care Med 2:113. doi:10.4172/2165-7386.1000113
Copyright: © 2012 Bush T. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
It is generally recognised that there is a need for nursing education to incorporate palliative care education within undergraduate programs in order to meet the professional and personal demands made upon nurses when providing end of life care [1,2]. Whilst historically, palliative care was confined to patients with cancer, it has now become a form of care offered to patients experiencing an incurable chronic disease [3]. With an ageing population it is expected that an increasing number of patients will require palliative carein a variety of settings including, a person’s own home, nursing homes, hospices, and virtually every clinical setting within acute care [4]. Nurses play a pivotal role in palliative and end of life care [5] and such care is recognised as being largely provided by nurses [6]. However, for this care to be effectively delivered requires nursing curricula to include discrete palliative care topics in order to help nursing students to be better prepared to assist palliative patients and their families [5].
