In addition to new country Bulgaria, nurses from Albania, Hungary and Romania are currently receiving training at the Austrian Medical Society in Salzburg on how to improve the quality of care they can provide for their patients who are in the final stages of their life. Since its inception, the ELNEC project has trained more than 24,000 professionals in all 50 states and now 100 countries. Those trained by ELNEC staff have since trained 720,000 professionals themselves in their own communities.
The ELNEC project launched at City of Hope in 2000 in partnership with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing after groundbreaking research showed there was a profound lack of education and training when it came to compassionate, multidisciplinary end-of-life care. Led since day one by ELNEC Project Director Rose Virani, M.H.A., O.C.M., R.N., ELNEC training helps nurses and physicians improve the quality of end-of-life care they can provide across a spectrum that includes not just physical care, but also psychosocial and spiritual care. Abroad, the project focuses on countries with limited resources and high mortality rates from cancer, tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases.
ELNEC has become a nursing industry standard and is part of traditional nursing education and training. It has been taught at sessions around the world in as far-flung and different locations as Poland, China and Kenya, at national and international professional conferences, and at community partnership events.
“This project has exceeded far beyond our borders and our expectations,” said Nursing Research Director Betty Ferrell, Ph.D., R.N., who was a principal investigator in the ELNEC research that began 20 years ago. “It is giving nurses around the world access to tools and training that enhance the final care experience for the patient. We’ve been able to transform conventional attitudes about what ‘end-of-life’ care should be, and that has changed millions of lives and amplified the mission of City of Hope on a global scale.”
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