Nurse’s Attitude Towards Palliative Care and Associated Factors in Ethiopia: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: Palliative care significantly improves the distressing symptoms of patients, especially those with cancer, heart disease, renal disease, and liver disease, and its need is increasing worldwide due to the growing burden of chronic disease. Nurses with an unfavorable attitude towards palliative care cannot skilfully assess the patient's needs, effective communication, and adequately address the patient's problems. Thus, this study was amid to assess the nurse’s level of attitude towards palliative care in Ethiopia.Method: PubMed/MEDLINE, HINARI, EMBASE, Scopus, Google Scholar, and African Journals Online (AJOL) were the databases used to search for articles. Cochrane I2 statistics and Eggers test was done to check heterogeneity and publication bias, respectively. Subgroup analysis and sensitivity analysis were also done to detect the source of heterogeneity and an influential study, respectively. Result: The pooled prevalence of nurse’s attitudes towards palliative care was 67.15% (95% CI: 54.75-79.54. Palliative care training was a significantly associated factor with the level of nurse’s attitude towards palliative care. Accordingly, nurses who have taken palliative care training (AOR=2.53; 95% CI; 1.88-3.40) was found a significantly associated factor with the level of nurse’s attitude towards palliative care.Conclusion: More than half of the nurses had a favorable attitude towards palliative care. Palliative care training was a significantly associated factor with the nurse’s level of attitude towards palliative care. Thus, palliative care training and improving nurse’s careers through continuous professional development should be given regularly for nurses to improve their knowledge about palliative care.