Dataset on the nurses’ knowledge, attitude and practice towards palliative care

Abstract

When a patient enters the end stage of life threatening disease like cancer, treatment of pain and other symptoms must be considered to preserve quality of life (Gielen et al., 2011) [1]. Nurses have an important role in the care of patients who suffered from life threatening diseases. End of life cares is one of the routine activities of nurses (Gott et al., 2012) [2]. We surveyed knowledge, attitude and practice of nurses who worked in the hospitals of Neyshabur University of Medical Sciences towards palliative care from January 2016 to May 2016. A self-administered Persian questionnaire was used for data collection. The attitude scale was adopted from Frommelt Attitude toward Care of the Dying (Frommelt, 1991) and the knowledge questions were adopted from the Palliative Care Quiz for Nursing (Ross et al., 1996). The practice questions were also adopted from different related studies. Data analysis was performed by SPSS Statistics software for windows version 16. Our study showed that majority of nurses had favorable attitude but poor knowledge and practice towards palliative care. The results emphasize the importance and need for developing palliative care services in our hospitals.

Nurses’ knowledge about palliative care and attitude towards end- of-life care in public hospitals in Wollega zones: A multicenter cross-sectional study

“…Nurses' palliative care mean total knowledge score (9.34) appears to be deficient in this study. This finding is higher compared to the previous studies undertaken in Saudi Arabia (2009), Southeast Iran (2014), and Iran (2019) [20][21][22]. Meanwhile, our study result is lower matched to researches reported from Canada (2009), in the USA [2009], Australia (2008) and Ireland (2016) [17,[30][31][32].…”

“…Our analysis displayed level of hospitals, education qualification and clinical working units has no significant association with the nurses' attitude toward end-of-life care. However, a higher level of education, working in a medical ward, and nurses received training on PC showed a more favorable attitude towards PC [17,19,22]. The experience of nurses and attitude toward end-of-life care is incongruent to each other in this study which might be affected by nurses' belief (religion and culture), their compassion and experience adapted from family members.…”

“…This is supported by the study result in Iran [21]. However, studies displayed that as nurses' years' work of experience and level of education were significantly associated with nurses' better knowledge score [21,22]. In contrast, one study reported that nurses' knowledge did not correlate with the training of palliative care [23].…”

“…Similarly, some studies [ 19 – 21 ] displayed a positive /favorable attitude about palliative care using the Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying Scale (FATCOD) instrument. In contrast, few studies showed that Kim and Hwang (2013) reported unfavorable attitudes among nurses toward palliative care for those with heart failure patients [ 22 ]. A structured cross-sectional study undertaken among 553 nurses working at a teaching hospital in Malaysia indicated unfavorable attitude towards end-of-life care [ 23 ].…”

“…Studies [ 19 , 20 , 22 , 24 , 25 ] showed that the absence of palliative care curriculum content, training in palliative care, years of nursing experience, institution, individuals’ level of education, and work unit significantly affects nurses’ knowledge to practice PC and/or their attitude toward palliative care. Integrating theoretical and practical training on palliative care improved students' knowledge and creates favorable attitudes toward death, dying, and end-of-life care [ 26 ].…”