Patient education is a very common topic area for nursing capstone projects. Nurses play an important role in educating patients, their families, and caregivers. Capstone projects sometimes work to develop new patient education programs, materials, or resources for conditions like diabetes, heart disease, asthma or other chronic illnesses. The projects will research best practices in patient education and develop materials to help patients better manage their conditions through lifestyle changes and medical regimens. The developed materials are then often tested with patients and their effectiveness evaluated.

End-of-life care is another significant area. With an aging population, more people are dealing with advanced illnesses, so improving end-of-life care is paramount. Capstones may explore ways to better meet the physical, psychological, social or spiritual needs of terminally ill patients and their families. This could involve examining palliative or hospice care programs, pain and symptom management, advance care planning, grief and bereavement support. The goal is to enhance quality of life and the death experience for patients. Some projects test new models of palliative care consultation or end-of-life planning interventions.

Prevention and management of chronic diseases are frequently addressed. This includes developing and evaluating programs aimed at lifestyle modifications for better disease control. Some examples may focus on preventing or managing obesity, cardiovascular issues, diabetes, cancer or respiratory illnesses through diet, exercise, medication adherence and smoking cessation programs. Outcome measures would assess improvements in biometric values like BMI, A1C or cholesterol as well as behaviors. Disease self-management support is another aspect