NR 524 Week 6 Curriculum Gap Analysis Example

Gap Analysis: Reading the Map, the Syllabi, the Exams and a Graduate Survey Against One Outcome, End-of-Life Care, and Reporting What Is Absent Alongside What Is There

Student Name

College of Nursing, Chamberlain University

NR 524: Curriculum Development

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Gap Analysis: Reading the Map, the Syllabi, the Exams and a Graduate Survey Against One Outcome, End-of-Life Care, and Reporting What Is Absent Alongside What Is There

The Outcome Under Review

This analysis examines one program outcome in our associate degree nursing curriculum: that graduates plan and give care reflecting the patient's and family's goals, with comfort as the aim when a patient's illness is advanced or death is near. The curriculum map showed this outcome introduced in three courses and never developed or brought to mastery. A map shows levels, not substance, so this analysis reads the documents behind the map and adds evidence the map cannot hold: teaching hours, examination items, clinical evaluation criteria and what graduating students report. It compares all of this with the national undergraduate palliative care competencies (Ferrell et al., 2016).

How the Evidence Was Gathered

Four kinds of evidence were gathered over three weeks. Course documents, including syllabi, class schedules and clinical evaluation tools, were read in full for all eight nursing courses. All unit and final examinations from the last academic year were reviewed item by item. The exit survey was already part of the program's annual evaluation, and two items on end-of-life preparation had been added the previous year. Employer views came from the advisory committee's regular meeting. Each source has limits: documents show what is planned, not what happens; examinations show what is tested, not what is learned; surveys show what students believe; and employer comments reflect a few leaders' experience. The analysis relies on the four together, since they point in the same direction.

Evidence 1: Teaching Time

Across the eight nursing courses, end-of-life content occupies about five scheduled hours: one hour on death and dying in Foundations, three hours on loss and grief in Mental Health, and one hour on perinatal loss in Maternal-Child. A hospice clinical day exists in Complex Care, but only as an option, taken by roughly one student in three. For comparison, the national online undergraduate end-of-life curriculum consists of six one-hour modules on its own (End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium, n.d.), more than our entire program provides.

Evidence 2: Examinations

We reviewed every unit and final examination in the eight courses, about 600 items in total. Two items addressed end-of-life care: one on recognizing signs of approaching death, one on responding to a grieving parent. Neither addressed pain or symptom management at the end of life, communication about goals of care or care of the family after death. What is not examined is, in students' reasonable reading, optional.

Evidence 3: Clinical Evaluation

The clinical evaluation tools for all eight courses contain no item on end-of-life or palliative care. A student can complete the program without ever being evaluated on caring for a dying patient, even if they cared for one.

Evidence 4: What Graduating Students Report

In the program's own exit survey of 41 graduating students last spring, 68% reported that they had never been present at a patient's death during a clinical experience, and 22% agreed that they felt prepared to talk with the family of a dying patient. These are self-reports from one cohort, not measures of competence, and they should be read as such. They are consistent with what the documents show.

Evidence 5: What Employers Said

At the spring meeting of the program's advisory committee, whose members lead nursing in the area's hospitals, nursing homes and home care service, the committee was asked a single open question: where do our new graduates most often need support in their first year? Three of the seven members named end-of-life care without being prompted. The home health director described new nurses who were skilled with wound care and medications but unsure what to say when a family asked whether their father was dying. A long-term care director said new graduates often called the physician for comfort orders they could have anticipated. These are impressions, not data, and they came from leaders who know the program well. They matter because they come from the settings the catalog promise names, and they point to the same absences as the documents.

What Is There

The analysis should not overstate the gap. Some content exists and is valued by students. The Mental Health course's week on grief is well developed, with a case discussion students rated highly. The optional hospice day, for the students who choose it, is a strong experience; preceptors from the local hospice describe our students as attentive and willing. Faculty in Foundations and Adult Health say they discuss end-of-life issues informally when they arise in clinical practice. These are real strengths the revision should build on rather than replace. A multisite study found a similar pattern elsewhere: palliative content present across several courses, mostly as lecture, without a home (Lippe, 2019).

What Is Absent, Against the National Competencies

Set against the national undergraduate palliative care competencies (Ferrell et al., 2016), the program partially addresses three areas: recognizing grief and loss, understanding the dying process, and supporting families. It does not address, in any taught or assessed way, communication about serious illness and goals of care, assessment and management of pain and other symptoms at the end of life, ethical and legal issues such as advance directives, cultural and spiritual aspects of dying, or care of the body and family after death. These absences matter most in our region, where most hiring hospitals lack a palliative team and the single biggest employer of new graduates runs home health with a hospice line.

Summary of the Gap

The gap is not a missing topic but a missing owner. End-of-life care appears in fragments that no course develops and no assessment checks. The evidence points to three needs, each of which the revision proposal will address: structured content at a developing level in the adult health courses, an assessed rehearsal of end-of-life communication before clinical exposure, and assessed competencies in the complex care course so that the outcome reaches mastery and is verified before graduation. The program's catalog already promises this care. The analysis shows what it would take to keep the promise.

The analysis was shared in draft with every course lead before it went to the curriculum committee, and two leads corrected hour counts in their own courses. Those corrections are reflected above, and both leads agreed with the analysis's conclusion.

References

End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium. (n.d.). ELNEC undergraduate/new graduate curriculum. Relias Academy. Retrieved September 30, 2026, from https://elnec.reliasacademy.com/elnec-undergraduate-new-graduate-curriculum

Ferrell, B., Malloy, P., Mazanec, P., & Virani, R. (2016). CARES: AACN's new competencies and recommendations for educating undergraduate nursing students to improve palliative care. Journal of Professional Nursing, 32(5), 327-333. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2016.07.002

Lippe, M. (2019). Assessment of primary palliative care content within prelicensure nursing education: A multisite feasibility study. Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing, 21(5), 373-381. https://doi.org/10.1097/NJH.0000000000000535