Perception of nurses about palliative care: Experience from South-West Nigeria

Abstract

Background:Nurses play a major role all over the world in the palliative care team.Aim:The aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge and attitude of nurses toward palliative care in a tertiary level hospital in Nigeria.Subjects and Methods:Setting: This cross-sectional questionnaire-based study was carried out among nurses at a tertiary health care facility in Ado-Ekiti, South-West Nigeria. A cross-sectional questionnaire-based study was carried out. The questionnaire sought information about the sociodemographic profile of respondents, their knowledge of definition and philosophy of palliative care among other things. Descriptive statistics was used to obtain the general characteristics of the study participants, while Chi-square was used to determine the association between categorical variables. A two-sided P < 0.05 was considered as significant.Results:A total of 100 questionnaires were returned with a female preponderance among the respondents with F: M ratio of 9:1. Regarding the definition of palliative care, 71.8% (48/66) of the respondents understood palliative care to be about pain medicine, 55% (33/60) thought it to be geriatric medicine, while 90.2% (83/92) felt palliative care is about the active care of the dying. Exactly 80.5% (66/82) respondents agreed that palliative care recognizes dying as a normal process while 84.1% (74/88) respondents were of the opinion that all dying patients would require palliative care. The use of morphine would improve the quality of life of patients according to 68.9% (42/61) of respondents.Conclusion:There are gaps in the knowledge of healthcare workers in the area of palliative care and this call for a review of the current nursing curriculum and practice guidelines in Nigeria.

Palliative care for people living with HIV/AIDS: Factors influencing healthcare workers’ knowledge, attitude and practice in public health facilities, Abuja, Nigeria

“…This finding is consistent with those from the works of Kassa[13], Gedamu[15] and Morsy[16] but differs in some other studies where level of knowledge of participants were high[17, 18]. A possible reason for this poor palliative care knowledge could be because majority of the study participants had not had training on palliative care either as in-service or during undergraduate study[19’ 20’ 21].…”

Pharmacists’ knowledge, attitude and involvement in palliative care in selected tertiary hospitals in southwestern Nigeria

“…The main instrument used for data collection was a semi-structured questionnaire developed by the investigators following extensive review of relevant studies [6,7,24,30], as well as utilizing previous experience from palliative care training. The questionnaire consisted of five sections.…”

“…Published reports especially from developed countries have identified different roles played by pharmacists in palliative care with benefits and effectiveness of service offered in this context [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. However, in most developing countries, palliative care is still an emerging medical specialty that require healthcare providers' contribution and participation [24][25][26][27]. In Nigeria for instance, palliative care is in its early stage of development [9,24,25,27], with services mainly limited to patients who attend the tertiary hospitals [24], while pharmacists were recognized among the least considered member of the healthcare team providing palliative care service [27][28][29][30].…”

“…However, in most developing countries, palliative care is still an emerging medical specialty that require healthcare providers' contribution and participation [24][25][26][27]. In Nigeria for instance, palliative care is in its early stage of development [9,24,25,27], with services mainly limited to patients who attend the tertiary hospitals [24], while pharmacists were recognized among the least considered member of the healthcare team providing palliative care service [27][28][29][30]. In addition, the Benchmark for Minimum Academic Standard from the two major regulatory agencies for pharmacy education in Nigeria, that is the National Universities Commission and the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria does not include aspects on palliative care in the curriculum contents.…”

Palliative Care: The Nigerian Perspective

“…Morphine remains a controlled drug in Nigeria and in some other countries because of fear of diversion of prescribed morphine. Knowledge gap have also been identified even among health care practitioners that provide palliative care in terms of their understanding of the goals that palliative care seeks to achieve [15]. Financial constraint is given as the major physical factor that prevents the patients from acquiring even their pain medications.…”