The aims of this study were to examine South Korean social workers' understanding of a patient's right to end-of-life care decisions (EOLCD) in long-term care facilities and to explore the effectiveness of their professional resources in their understanding of this issue. A survey was conducted of 297 social workers from multiple long-term care facilities in South Korea using structured questionnaires and face-to-face interviews. A multiple regression model was used, controlling for gender and religion. The participants' professional resources were measured by years of work, license type, number of beds, knowledge of advanced directives, experience in the EOLCD process, and training. The results demonstrated that South Korean social workers' understanding of a patient's right to EOLCD was moderate (mean 3.46), and their general (b = 0.576, P < 0.001) and medical knowledge (b = 0.117, P < 0.001) of advance directives, experience in the EOLCD process (b = 0.222, P < 0.001), and training (b = 0.028, P < 0.001) positively and significantly increased their understanding of patient rights (R 2 = 0.449, P < 0.001). The findings suggested that the development of academically supported and legally enforced standards and regulations for an EOLCD practice manual for long-term-care social workers would be beneficial.
The aims of this study is to analyze the experiences of family members and hospice teams regarding hospice care in Korea where culture and institution for well-dying is in the early stage. The study was conducted through in-depth interviews based on the grounded theory method. The participants were 12 individuals, 5 family members and 7 individuals from the hospice team. 133 concepts, 34 subcategories, and 11 categories were derived. The core phenomenon was “maintaining balance by becoming a ballast in the journey toward death”. From the analysis of paradigm model, this phenomenon was caused to the medical-centered hospice service, the negative social and cultural context of death. It was strategically responded to the scope and contents of the interventions by the hospice team. Systematic, policy, and implementation plans that could improve the quality of hospice care were discussed.
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