As of July 7, 2006 the PERT Curriculum will no longer be available on-line. We are in the process of updating the curriculum and transferring it to the End-of-life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC).
Originally funded in 2000 by a major grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the ELNEC project is a national education initiative to improve end-of-life care in the United States. ELNEC is formatted as a Train-the Trainer course. Course attendees must attend a 2-day class and agree to participate in follow-up evaluation activities. In addition to the ELNEC Core Curriculum, which is aimed at undergraduate nursing students and generalist nurses, there are also Graduate, Pediatric, and Oncology versions, with a Critical Care course currently being developed. To date, over 2,700 nurses from all 50 states have received ELNEC training.
The California Healthcare Foundation has provided funding to support the development and pilot-testing of the Geriatric/Long-term Care version of the ELNEC curriculum. Betty Ferrell, PhD, RN, FAAN, Principal Investigator for the ELNEC project and Mary Ersek, PhD, RN, Principal Investigator for the PERT grant, will lead the project. The curriculum will blend the content, format and supplemental materials from both projects, resulting in an updated, state-of-the art educational resource.
Initially, the ELNEC Geriatric/Long-term Care training sessions will be open only to nurses practicing in California state. The first course will take place from January 31 to February 2, 2007, in Long Beach, California. Additional funding is being sought to support national dissemination of the curriculum.
More information is available at the ELNEC website. Also check back to the PERT website for ongoing updates, new Tips of the Month, and notices of upcoming web conferences.
