A training program for home care professionals, HOPE (Home care Outreach for Palliativecare Education), was designed to improve the knowledge and skills of those providing careto patients and family caregivers at home. This article presents an overview of the pilot HOPEtraining program and a case study to illustrate the complex end-of-life (EOL) care needs innonhospice home care settings. HOPE was designed as five training modules based on a needsassessment survey completed by 134 home care agencies. The training modules were composedof (a) General Overview of End of Life Care; (b) Pain Management; (c) Symptom Management;(d) Communication with Patients and Families; and (e) the Death Event. The programwas implemented for clinical staff (N = 52), predominantly nurses, in two home careagencies and evaluated with pre- and postcourse surveys. Pre- and postcourse evaluationsdemonstrated an increase in the overall rating of EOL care from a mean rating of 5.97 to 7.42for self-assessment and from 6.59 to 7.94 for agency assessment (on a scale of 0 = not at alleffective to 10 = very effective). Future palliative care education should also include evaluationof the impact of such programs on patient care. We concluded that increasing palliativecare knowledge of home care professionals is necessary to improve patient care at the EOL.
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