Nurses’ Knowledge About End-of-Life Care: Where Are We?

Abstract

Comprehensive continuing education programs on end-of-life care should be provided to fill the gap in knowledge and skill of staff nurses.

An instrument to measure nurses' knowledge in palliative care: Validation of the Spanish version of Palliative Care Quiz for Nurses

“…The reasons to use the PCQN Spanish version as a tool to measure nurses’ knowledge in palliative care were: its shortness, its self-administration, the fact that it considers different aspects of palliative care and that it has been translated into several languages and that their different versions have shown appropriate internal validity levels, which has been useful in order to measure nurses level of knowledge about palliative care in different countries [23,25], [27–29], [31–34]. …”

Pilot of an Online Introduction to Palliative Care for Nurses

“…Lack of understanding of the metabolic changes that affect patient cognition may indicate that nurses are not aware of the signs and symptoms of impending death, which could affect nursing care and management. 10,15,17 It is disturbing that this belief prevails in participants in this study and another US study, 10 despite emphasis on pain management as a part of TJC hospital certification for over a decade. Thirty-five percent of the nurses responded that the use of placebos for some types of cancer pain was appropriate.…”

“…11 In recent studies evaluating nursing knowledge using the PCQN outside the United States, the mean average score was 52.5% to 63.4% among nurses in Canadian long-term-care homes, 16 58.5% among nurses in Australian residential care facilities, 15 44.8% among Korean nurses in an acute care setting, 17 and 38% among oncology and intensive care unit nurses in southeast Iran. The results of the PCQN pretest, although conducted on only a small sample of the nursing population, indicate a deficiency in palliative care nursing knowledge that may be prevalent throughout the institution.…”

“…[8][9][10][11][15][16][17][18] The results of this pilot study suggest that a brief online educational intervention can improve knowledge in the short term. [8][9][10][11][15][16][17][18] The results of this pilot study suggest that a brief online educational intervention can improve knowledge in the short term.…”

“…10,11 Despite having more years of experience and specialist-level critical care backgrounds, nurses still expressed their challenges with communication related to cultural, spiritual, end-of-life, and bereavement issues and how these discussions can impact them emotionally. [14][15][16][17][18] Thus, palliative care education is an international imperative to ensure nursing professionals' comfort and competence in caring for those with advanced disease. [14][15][16][17][18] Thus, palliative care education is an international imperative to ensure nursing professionals' comfort and competence in caring for those with advanced disease.…”