Palliative care consultations for patients with life-threatening illnesses provide benefits for the patients and their families as well as for the health care team. Patients have better quality of life and live longer but cost the health care system less. Still, many patients are not offered the opportunity to receive a palliative care consultation. Barriers to palliative care consultation for patients in critical care units include misunderstandings about palliative care and not having agreed upon criteria for referral. Critical care nurses can assist in overcoming these barriers. (Critical Care Nurse. 2015;35[5]: [44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52]

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Suffering is an inevitable reality that student nurses may be unprepared to witness. The 14-week college course, Understanding Suffering, was developed to help students better understand the suffering experience. Content for the course was drawn from nursing, sociological, and theological perspectives. Students scored significantly higher on a post-course evaluation of empathy and stated they felt better prepared to intervene in difficult clinical situations involving suffering. Course development, assignments, and evaluation are described in the article.

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