NURSES INTEREST GROUP

Chair:

Rose DeAngelis

Terms of Reference
Contact List

"Perspectives on Hospice Palliative Care - Nursing"

	November 2007 Meeting Minutes Toronto, Ontario		September 2005 Meeting Minutes
	Work Plan 2005-2006		Meeting Agenda - September 25, 2005   Edmonton, Alberta
	September 2004 Annual Meeting Agenda Montreal, Quebec		October 2002 Meeting Minutes

The CHPCA is pleased to announce the creation of List Serves for the CHPCA Interest Groups.  These List Serves provide an opportunity to share ideas, concerns, proposals, assessment tools, effective interventions, educational opportunities, etc. with others working in the field of hospice palliative care.  This is not a real time chat line, but a place to post messages and receive replies. 

Any Registered Nurse in Canada is welcome to join the CHPCA Nurses Interest Group and List Serve as a Regular Member.  Additionally, any Licensed or Registered Practical Nurse in Canada is invited to join the Nurses Interest Group as an Associate Member, and thereby enjoy access to the List Serve. Full details on the membership distinctions for the Nurses Interest Group are located on page 5 of the Terms of Reference document.

Membership with the Nurses Interest Group includes access and participation in the List Serve and is available through joint membership with the CHPCA and your provincial hospice palliative care association. A $10 additional fee is required for membership with the Nurses Interest Group. Becoming a CHPCA member is easy.  Simply go to the Membership Page on this web site, print out the joint members form and send with payment to the CHPCA office.  Once your membership has been processed, and the $10 Nurses Interest Group fee included in the registration you will receive an e-mail invitation to joint the Nurses Interest Group List Serve. 

Should you have any questions please contact Gillian Fernie at the CHPCA office (at gfernie@scohs.on.ca).

Over the past ten years palliative care nurses from across the country expressed the desire to be recognized as a specialty within the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA). The CNA have been most supportive of this desire to become recognized as a specialty and to that end have worked with us to achieve that goal.

The first phase of becoming recognized as a specialty involved writing palliative care standards and preparing a proposal to the CNA in support of the specialty designation.  Dale Orychock and Judy Simpson, Nova Scotia Hospice Palliative Care Association, led the development of the palliative care nursing standards in April 2001.  Maryse Bouvette, Ottawa, led the team who prepared and submitted the proposal in support of certification to the CNA.

Eleven nurses from across Canada met in April 2001 to draft the first set of palliative care nursing standards.  These standards were circulated in French and English to nurses around the country for critique and review. Based on the commentary and critique from 180 nurses, the standards were revised.

The CHPCA Palliative Care Nursing Interest Group met in Victoria at a National CHPCA Conference in October of 2001. Nearly 300 nurses participated at the meeting in which the certification initiative was presented.  Information included: the rationale for having palliative care standards; the process involved to develop, disseminate, review and revise the standards; description of the model on which the standards were based; and the description of the proposal for specialty designation submitted to the CNA.  Suggestions for minor revisions were received. Following the discussion, participants voted on the question “Do you accept the document Hospice Palliative Care Nursing Standards of Practice, as the standard for hospice palliative care nursing in Canada?”  The response was a resounding 90.5% vote in favour; 8.6% voted no.

These current standards, entitled Hospice Palliative Care Nursing Standards of Practice reflect the work of the development team and the recommended revisions of nurses across Canada and the 300 nurses in that National CHPCA conference in Victoria .  The standards formed the basis of  the body of knowledge for the Certification for Palliative Care Nursing with CNA and became the framework for palliative care nursing across the country.

Since that time, the CNA has awarded palliative care nursing the designation of specialty, making this the 12^th discipline to become a specialty. Now, five years later, there are 756 Registered Nurses in Canada who are certified in hospice palliative care nursing with another cohort who wrote the hospice palliative care certification exam in April 2006.  This is a tremendous achievement for palliative care nursing in Canada and it is expected that this expansion of the number of nurses skilled in the knowledge of hospice palliative care nursing will enhance the quality of care provided at end of life for all Canadians.