ELNEC Curricula

The first APRN course, supported by Cambia Health Foundation, debuted April 4 & 5, 2013 in Anaheim, CA with 115 APRN participants, representing 26 states. There are many palliative care teams across the US being led by APRNs and they are key team members who exemplify commitment to their varied roles in not only leadership, but practice, education, and research. Participants receive advanced education in pain and symptom assessment/management and communication. Additional education in palliative care-related finances, budgets, quality improvement, education, and leadership are also provided. Participants can choose to attend one of two tracks—adult- or pediatric-focused care.

View more information on current ELNEC APRN national course offerings or to register.

ELNEC Oncology APRN (EOA) is a five-year project funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The NCI grant provides 5 national training courses (2023 – 2028) and its purpose is to educate and provide resources to oncology advanced practice nurses in an effort to prepare them to provide primary palliative care. 300 advanced practice nurses attended the course in the first three cohorts. View more information on current ELNEC Oncology APRN national course offerings or to apply.

The area of communication has been a key part of the ELNEC curriculum since the project began in 2001. However, the national ELNEC Project Team received consistent feedback that more emphasis is needed on this important topic of communication. Debuted in 2018, The ELNEC Communication curriculum is based on the National Consensus Project (NCP) Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care with separate modules developed to address communication in each of the eight NCP domains: structures and processes of care, physical aspects, psychological, social, spiritual, cultural, end of life care, and ethical aspects of care.

View more information on current ELNEC Communication national course offerings or to register.

ELNEC Core is used to train staff nurses, advanced practice nurses, undergraduate and graduate nursing faculty, administrators, and researchers who work in acute care settings (i.e., medical-surgical and oncology units), clinics, homecare, hospice, and palliative care settings. Several national ELNEC Core courses are held each year.

View more information on current ELNEC Core national course offerings or to register.

This course was developed for nurses who work in intensive care, coronary care, burn and dialysis units, emergency departments, and other clinical areas encompassing critical care. At least one national train-the-trainer critical care course is offered around the country annually.

View more information on current ELNEC Critical Care national course offerings or to register

With life expectancy increasing and the numbers of aging adults growing each day, the healthcare system in the U.S. and abroad requires nurses to be educated in meeting the palliative care needs of older adults. The ELNEC Geriatric curriculum addresses the specific educational needs of nurses who provide care to people who reside at home or are being cared for in community-based settings, such as assisted living, nursing communities, skilled nursing settings, hospices, or ambulatory care clinics. Each module provides essential elements of geriatric palliative care that are easy to teach and implement across community care settings. Unique features of the course include a focused module on geriatric palliative care that elaborates on physiologic changes in older adults, medications, and chronic conditions using a person-centered approach. Geriatric syndromes are integrated across all 8 modules. Undergraduate and graduate nursing faculty report that its supplemental teaching materials and case studies are invaluable to their current lectures. In addition, the curriculum includes supplemental teaching strategies for educating unlicensed personnel that work with geriatric patients and their families.

View more information on current ELNEC Geriatric national course offerings or to register.

ELNEC Pediatric was designed and developed by 20 pediatric palliative care experts and piloted in 2003. The curriculum also includes perinatal and neonatal content. In 2021, we added a new specific module focused on Perinatal Palliative Care to the curriculum.

Access Perinatal Palliative Care Module

View more information on current ELNEC Pediatraic Palliative Care national course offerings or to register.

ELNEC training courses (Core, Critical Care, Geriatric, and Pediatric) are available online through Relias. Each online curriculum is designed for the learner to go at their own pace. CEs are available and learners will receive a certificate of completion. NOTE: the online Relias courses are trainings, not Train-the-Trainer courses. For our Train-the-Trainer courses, please see our Summits/National Courses.

• Individual Pricing
• Institution Pricing

The ELNEC Undergraduate/New Graduate Curriculum, updated and revised in 2023, is an online curriculum for pre-licensure nursing students, RN-BSN nursing students and those new to clinical practice in a nurse residency or orientation program. The curriculum contains six interactive modules (1-2 hours each) which prepare the learner to meet the AACN CARES competencies for primary palliative care. The modules contain cases, critical thinking and clinical judgement case-based questions, video demonstrations of primary palliative care skills, and an NCLEX-style quiz at the end of the module. Upon successful mastery of the content in all six modules (80% or higher on the quizzes), learners receive an ELNEC certificate for their portfolios. The cost is $29/student for 12 months of access. 

For free faculty access to view the curriculum, please contact elnec@coh.org.

Supplemental teaching resources are available for any faculty member using the curriculum in their schools by contacting elnec@coh.org

Information on Bookstore Utilization:

The ELNEC Undergraduate/New Graduate & ELNEC Graduate Curricula can be placed in your school bookstore to make purchase easy for students who want to use their financial aid package to pay for textbooks and course materials. Please contact elnec@coh.org for assistance with this simple process.

For more information on ELNEC Undergraduate/New Graduate please contact ELNEC@coh.org.

Take a peek: https://elnec.academy.reliaslearning.com/

NOTE: CEs are not provided for registered nurses who are students in an RN-BSN program nor graduate school of nursing.

The ELNEC Graduate Curriculum, developed in 2019, is an online curriculum for master’s and Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) students, designed to meet the AACN G-CARES competencies for advanced practice primary palliative care. The curriculum, modeled after ELNEC Undergraduate/New Graduate, contains six one-hour interactive modules. All content is essential for those becoming advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) across all six population foci.

The modules contain cases, video demonstrations of APRNs performing primary palliative care skills such as advance care planning conversations, pain and symptom management, and leadership in primary palliative care. Following successful completion of all six modules (80% or higher on the quizzes), learners receive an ELNEC certificate for their portfolios.

For free faculty access to view the curriculum, please contact elnec@coh.org.

Supplemental teaching resources are available for any faculty member using the curriculum in their schools by contacting elnec@coh.org

Information on Bookstore Utilization:

The ELNEC Undergraduate/New Graduate & ELNEC Graduate Curricula can be placed in your school bookstore to make purchase easy for students who want to use their financial aid package to pay for textbooks and course materials. Please contact elnec@coh.org for assistance with this simple process.

Take a peak: https://elnec.academy.reliaslearning.com/

NOTE: CEs are not provided for registered nurses who are students in an RN-BSN program nor graduate school of nursing.

While the initial ELNEC efforts, launched in 2000, were focused in the United States, many ELNEC trainers have had opportunities to travel internationally and provide this education to nurses and other healthcare providers throughout the world. Currently, ELNEC trainers and faculty have traveled to six of the seven continents, representing 101 countries. Many trainers have provided ELNEC educational courses, while others have gone as consultants to work with educators, health administrators, and community leaders to improve care of the seriously ill in their countries. Some are working on translating ELNEC into other languages and adapting it to increase the relevance to other cultures. As of 2020, ELNEC has been translated into 12 additional languages: Albanian, Armenian, Chinese, Czech, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish.

Building palliative care leaders has been a major emphasis of the national ELNEC team. To date, 100+ nurses and physicians have attended leadership courses from 2014-2019. To find an international ELNEC trainer, visit this page and go to the International Trainers tab.

The ELNEC For Veterans curriculum was updated in 2023 and is designed to meet the unique needs of nurses caring for Veterans with serious illness. The expertise gained at these courses promises to improve the quality of palliative care for thousands of Veterans in 153 Department of Veterans’ Affairs Medical Centers across the U.S. To date, six national train-the-trainer Veterans courses have been held across the U.S. with 745 nurses and other members of the interdisciplinary team in attendance, representing over 200 VA facilities (i.e., medical centers, clinics, CLC’s, etc.). Community partners with VA (i.e., homecare, hospice, etc.) have attended these courses, too, as they care for many Veterans in various community settings.

View more information on the ELNEC-For Veterans curriculum.