Palliative care awareness among health care professionals in Nigeria.

An Ethnographic Study of Palliative and End-of-Life Care in a Nigerian Hospital: Impact of Education on Care Provision and Utilization

“…Other researchers in Nigeria have also acknowledged the absence of PC training institutions/universities in Nigeria (Oyebola, 2017). In addition, a previous study conducted in Lagos State in the south-west of Nigeria found that HCPs involved with the care of cancer and HIV patients had learned some aspects of PC on the job without any formal training (Akinnyemiju et al, 2015). This suggests that the absence of formal PC education for HCPs is not peculiar to the studied hospital.…”

“…However, in Africa, PC education and, consequently, specialists in PC are severely limited (Clark et al, 2019;Van der Plas et al, 2020;World Health Organization, 2018). For instance, health care professionals (HCPs) in Nigeria and Rwanda were reported to have discharged their duties without formal training/education in PC Akinnyemiju et al, 2015;Uwimana & Struthers, 2007). However, some African countries such as Uganda, South Africa, Kenya, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania have made progress through either developing PC educational center or implementing national PC program in conjunction with local universities (Hannon et al, 2016).…”

Barriers to the provision and utilization of palliative care in Africa: A rapid scoping review

“…Three primary research papers found that healthcare professionals from Rwanda and Nigeria complained that they lacked formal training in PC, although they had learned about some aspects of PC while providing care to service users,[ 14 36 48 ] confirming what has been reported in the literature about the development of PC in Africa. [ 22 23 24 ] Findings across the previous review papers about PC consistently reported that countries such as South Africa, Uganda, Botswana, Kenya, Zambia, Swaziland, Malawi, Rwanda, Namibia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Cote d'Ivoire, and Tanzania had developed national PC programs which were either being implemented in collaboration with local universities or were planned to be implemented.…”

“…The knowledge and attitude of the healthcare providers (physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, medical interns, medical students, and the clergymen) were one of the dominant issues featuring in nine empirical studies and four reviews. Majority of nurses, doctors, and other medical staff were reported to be aware of PC,[ 14 15 16 ] contrary to 61.8% of religious leaders and seminarians who had not heard of it. [ 17 ] Two studies conducted in Nigeria utilized questionnaires for data collection and concluded that healthcare professionals had good knowledge about PC because most the nurses and doctors understood PC to be active care for the dying, thought that PC was about pain or geriatric medicine, and felt that PC recognizes death as a normal process and affirms life.…”

“…[ 23 26 ] This finding revealed that there is a complete lack of PC education or training institutions for healthcare professionals in most African countries, despite the desire among healthcare professionals across many countries, such as Nigeria, to be trained in PC. [ 14 ]…”