The Effect of an End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium Course on Nurses' Knowledge of Hospice and Palliative Care in Korea

The purpose of this study was to describe Korean nurses' knowledge of hospice and palliative care and to identify the effect of an End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium course on Korean nurses' palliative care knowledge. The study used a pretest and posttest design. A Korean version of the Palliative Care Quiz for Nursing was administered to 111 Korean nurses who had attended the course. To analyze the data, paired t tests and repeated-measures analysis of variance were conducted. The average level of Korean nurses' knowledge of hospice and palliative care was 12.5/20 points at the beginning of the course. Nurses with hospice certification scored higher than those who were not certified. Nurses with associate degrees scored significantly lower than those with master's and doctoral degrees. After attending the course, the knowledge of hospice and palliative care increased among all groups, especially significantly higher for the group of nurses never certified in hospice and palliative nursing. Overall, the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium course was effective for Korean nurses in increasing the knowledge on hospice and palliative care. Recommendations include continuous evaluation of the course with an instrument sensitive to Korean culture.