Palliative care Awareness among Indian undergraduate health care students: A needs-assessment study to determine incorporation of palliative care education in undergraduate medical, nursing and allied health education

Abstract

Purpose:Quality assurance data worldwide suggests that the current healthcare system is providing inadequate care for the dying. Current health care education focuses entirely on cure and care is almost compromised or nonexistent in end-of-life settings. The purpose of this study was to determine palliative care awareness among Indian undergraduate health care students and assess the need for incorporating palliative medicine education into undergraduate health education.Materials and Methods:A non-randomized population based study was conducted using 39-point questionnaire. Undergraduate medical, nursing and allied health students of Manipal University were the target population.Results:326 students participated in the study. 61.7% of students feel that resuscitation is appropriate in advanced metastatic cancer. 67.5% feel that all dying patients need palliative care and most of the students think that palliative care is equivalent to pain medicine, geriatric medicine and rehabilitation medicine. 89% of students think that Morphine causes addiction in palliative care setting. 60.7% of students feel that prognosis should only be communicated to the family.Conclusion:The outcomes of the study showed that the basic knowledge of palliative care among students was inadequate, and students are unprepared and uncertain in their approach of delivering end-of-life care.

Dealing with end of life—New graduated nurse experiences

“…End of life care was seen to be an important feature of undergraduate nursing education, despite undergraduate nurses often feeling underprepared for this area of work (Barrere & Durkin, 2014;Kopp & Hanson, 2012;Mutto et al, 2012). This is an international phenomenon revealed by studies in various countries including, India (Sadhu, Salins, & Kamath, 2010), Australia (Gillan, Parmenter, Van Der Riet, & Jeong, 2013;Hegarty et al, 2010;Bush & Shahwan-Akl, 2013), and the United States of America (Dobbins, 2011;Ellman et al, 2012) and Argentina (Mutto, Errazquin, Rabhansl, & Villar, 2010).…”

An exploratory analysis of levels of evidence for articles published in Indian journal of palliative care in the years 2010-2011

“…Thus we had a final list of 90 articles for our analysis. [1112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100]…”

Inclusion of palliative care in Indian undergraduate physiotherapy curriculum-course guidelines and content

“…[2021222324] Palliative Care Training in India is almost nonexistent in most of Healthcare Training Program curriculums. [102022] St. John’s National Academy of Health Sciences was the first institute where palliative care was added to the undergraduate medical and nursing curriculum in 2001.…”

“…[20] Sadhu et al . [21] studied palliative care awareness among Indian undergraduate healthcare students of medicine, nursing, and allied health education. They reported that Indian students were unprepared and had lack expertise in death and dying and end of life care issues because Health Care Training Programs including those training doctors who care for many dying patients fail to hold them accountable for competency in these areas.…”

“…[20212529] Pain and its expression, concepts of suffering and death and the acceptance of death all have cultural connotations. Thus, understanding of sociology and psychology becomes very valuable.…”