How The Nurses' Attitude for Dying Patients and Their Knowledge about Palliative Care?

Abstract

Objective: To determine nurses' level of knowledge when it comes to palliative care as well as to investigate their attitudes regarding the care of terminally ill patients. Methods: This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted with the voluntary participation of 350 nurses in three major hospitals affiliated to the General Secretariat of the Union of Public Hospitals of Sakarya. Data were gathered via a Self-description Form, the Frommelt Attitudes Toward Care of Dying scale (FATCOD), and Palliative Care Knowledge Test (PCKT), and analysis was conducted using percentages and average scores as well as the Mann-Whitney U, Kruskall-Wallis H and Pearson's correlation tests. Results: The nurses, whose age average was 35.58 +/- 7.63 years, were predominantly female (84.3%). More than half of them were married (60.9%), nearly half of them were university graduates (51.4%), and 62.9% of them work in Internal Diseases units. The nurses' average PCKT score was 6.35 +/- 3.31 and their average FATCOD score was 77.98 +/- 8.81. Marital status, level of education, and their employment units did not affect the attitudes towards death (p>0.05) but they did affect palliative care knowledge levels. Conclusion: In the study, it was determined that palliative care knowledge levels of nurses were low and their attitudes toward care giving to terminally ill people were at the medium level.