Nurses’ Knowledge and Attitudes towards Palliative Care: A Study in a Western Province in Indonesia

Abstract

Background: The delay in the development of palliative care in Indonesia is also related to the dearthof studies related to palliative care in Indonesia, including the study of nurses’ knowledge and attitudestowards palliative care. Efforts are needed to explore the knowledge and attitudes of nurses aboutpalliative care. This research was aimed to identify the determinants of related factors to knowledge andattitudes of nurses towards palliative care.Methods: A quantitative research with cross sectional study design was used for research. Data wascollected by using several well-reported questionnaires, namely the the Palliative Care Quiz for Nurses(PCQN) questionnaire to assess level of knowledge, and the Frommelt Attitudes Toward Care ofthe Dying Scale (FATCOD) Form-B questionnaire to analyze nurses’ attitudes. With the SystematicRandom Sampling, 256 nurses participated in this online survey. The respondent’s response rate whichwas 94.9%.Conclusions: This research showed that there was no significant relationship between knowledgeand nurses’ attitudes about palliative care. However, there was a significant relationship between age,and training of palliative with nurses’ knowledge of palliative care. Level of education, and nurses‘employment status with nurses’ attitudes about palliative care also showed a significant relationship.Further analysis revealed that level of education was the only predictor which related to nurses’ attitudesabout palliative care.