Objective To develop a palliative care course for nursing home nurses and to evaluate the training effect.Methods Based on Watson′s human caring theory and Delphi method, a palliative care course for nursing home nurses was developed.Then a training manual was compiled and used for training 35 nursing home nurses.Both theoretical and practical assessments were conducted before and after the training and nurses′ caring behavior was also assessed.Results The course included 5 primary indicators, 27 secondary indicators, and 34 tertiary indicators.The training manual consisted of 6 chapters, totaling 20 training hours.After the training, nurses′ scores in theoretical and practical assessments as well as their caring behavior were significantly improved （all P＜0.05）.Conclusion The course has good applicability and can achieve significant training effects on palliative care in nursing home nurses.