Educational Needs for Home-Based End-of-Life Hospice Care Among Community Home-Visiting Nurses

Background/Objectives: Home-based end-of-life care is expanding in Korea with population aging and community care legislation, yet most deaths still occur in institutions, and the educational needs of nurses delivering such care remain poorly characterized. This study prioritized educational needs for home-based end-of-life hospice care (HEHC) among community home-visiting nurses. Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 120 nurses providing home hospice or end-of-life visiting care in Chungcheong, Korea, recruited through convenience sampling, rated the importance and performance of 56 educational items across 15 domains on 5-point scales. Importance and performance were compared using paired t-tests, and differences by participant characteristics using independent t-tests and analysis of variance with Scheffé’s post hoc tests. Educational priorities were derived by combining Borich needs scores with the “concentrate here” quadrant of importance–performance analysis. Results: Importance ratings (4.34 ± 0.45) exceeded performance ratings (3.23 ± 0.83) overall (t = 11.358, p < 0.001; Cohen’s dz = 1.04) and in all 15 domains. Eight priorities emerged: legal issues in end-of-life care, linkage with community and external institutions, decision-making on withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, stress and burnout management, interdisciplinary partnership, management of neuropsychiatric symptoms and palliative sedation, philosophical understanding of death, and management of ethical dilemmas. Nurses without advanced practice nurse certification, without a workplace collaboration system, or with less than one year of home-based end-of-life care experience reported higher importance but lower performance. Conclusions: The observed pattern suggests that education for HEHC could be staged by home-based end-of-life care experience and complemented by institutional collaboration structures and community resource linkages, since individual training alone is unlikely to close the gap.