Healthcare professionals? views on palliative care

Aim of this descriptive and cross sectional study was to explore healthcare professionals? knowledge and views on palliative care. This study has been conducted at Baskent University Ankara and Adana Hospitals and Dr. Abdurrahman Yurtaslan Ankara Oncology Education and Research Hospitals. Total of 369 healthcare professionals (235 nurse, 84 doctor, 18 physiotherapist, 16 dietician, 7 health officer, 5 social worker, 4 psychologist) who works in adult clinics at these hospitals were constitute to the sample.Data has been collected via a form based on the literature (socio-demographics, open ended questions and 16 items on healthcare professionals? views on palliative care). In data analyses besides descriptive statistics One Way Anova or Kruskall Wallis and chi-square tests were used.Mean age was 29; majority of them were women and has baccalaureate degree, mean working years in profession was 7. More than half of the health professionals (53.7%) did not receive education on palliative care; mostly received during university education (57.3%) and majority of them (86.2%) stated lack of in-service/continuing education on palliative care in their institution.Majority of health professionals stated the meaning and goal of palliative care as ?improving the quality of life of patient whose in terminal stage?. While most of them indicated that nurse, doctor and psychologist should be the member of the palliative care team; volunteers, chaplain and pharmacist were less frequently stated as part of the team. The target groups were listed as patients with oncological diseases (75.1%) and terminal stage (74.5%); stated that palliative care services can be provided as hospital based (87.8%). The barriers for development of the palliative care services in Turkey were listed as ignorance (44.4%) and lack of education (42.9%). Majority of them indicated the need for educational program on palliative care including basic concepts, principles (80.7%) and communication (78.9%) issues.Most of health professionals were agreed/completely agreed on these statements: ?Palliative care includes the services for patient with advanced cancer? ?Patient and family members are main decision maker and member of the team? ?Palliative care should be provided by multidisciplinary team? and ?Palliative care should be separate specialty/discipline?. However nearly half of them disagreed on ?Palliative care provides only pain management?. In comparison the mean of the item responses towards some of the palliative care statements according to having knowledge on palliative care, profession, educational level/subspecialty area, age and working units; the difference were found statistically significant (p<0.05).Based on these results it has been recommended that palliative care should be provided in curricula and in-service education programs to increase awareness among healthcare professionals.Key words: Palliative, palliative care, healthcare professionals views