Knowledge of Palliative Care among Bachelors Nursing Students

Abstract

Background: Palliative care clinical nurse specialists play an important role in specialist palliative care. They spend time with patients and their families, helping them come to terms with an array of complex emotional and practical problems, facilitating communication, giving information and advice about treatments and also offering expertise in controlling pain and other distressing symptoms. Aim of the study: The purpose of this study was to assess the PC knowledge using PCQN of  BSN students in Arab American University/ Jenin, Palestine.Subjects and methods: Descriptive, cross sectional study was used for conducting the study, A convenience sample 198 nursing students were included  from the two respective nursing levels third year and fourth year. Data collected through; demographic characteristic and PC knowledge. The PCQN  scale was used as the tool to assess the PC knowledge level. Results:  The total percentage rate on the PCQN was 40.58% (SD=13.89011). There is no statistically significant difference at (p < 0.05) between PC knowledge and gender, academic level, personal or professional experience with palliative care, and course of palliative care (0.377, 0.896, 0.741, and 0.829) respectively. Highly statistically significant relation according age (p˃0.000).Conclusion: Clinical Relevance: third and fourth level BSN students had lack adequate information on palliative care, and did not meet the AACN expectation of a generalist registered nurse.

Keywords: Knowledge, Nursing students, Palliative care