Jeri L. Ashley, Baptist’s director of system advance care planning, has received the 2015 End of Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) Award from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. She earned the award for her implementation of ELNEC, a national curriculum that teaches the core knowledge for expertise in palliative care.
Jeri helped develop and grow advance care planning and palliative medicine services in all 14 Baptist hospitals, educating employees about the importance of planning for health care decisions, and expanding and enhancing the clinical staff’s knowledge of pain and symptom management for all patients in a variety of settings.
When Jeri examined the grant’s goals and noted Baptist has 15,000 team members, ELNEC became the starting point of training. During the last three years, she, along with other Baptist experts, completed eight courses for more than 150 team members, plus a citywide course for 23 advanced practice nurses. Each course was two days long and offered continuing nursing education credit.
Jeri’s all-time favorite evaluation comment was, “This course makes me want to be a better nurse than I am today.”