Approach to Palliative Care among Medical Interns of a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital in Tamil Nadu

Background: The current healthcare system is providing inadequate care for the dying. Current health care education focuses entirely on cure and end of life care is almost compromised or non existent. The purpose of this study was to determine palliative care awareness among Indian medical interns and assess the need for incorporating palliative medicine education into undergraduate health education. Objectives: 1) To understand the perception of medical interns on palliative care 2) To assess the knowledge of medical interns on palliative care. Materials and Methods: It was an Exploratory Mixed-Method study design (Qualitative- Focus Group Discussion followed by Quantitative-self-administered questionnaire survey) from October and November 2018. Two Focus Group Discussions were conducted separately among ten medical interns each. They were purposively selected as they were vocal and willing to participate. Informed written consent was obtained from each participant and the FGDs were conducted by a trained facilitator at a time and place convenient to the participants. The discussions were audio recorded and noted simultaneously by a note taker who was also trained in qualitative research methods and manual content analysis of the data was done. It was followed by a quantitative self- administered survey. Descriptive statistics, which included frequency, means, and percentages, were used to describe the data. Conclusion: The knowledge of Palliative care among medical interns is inadequate. Hence training doctors and nurses regarding end of life care in hospitals is necessary, as it has also become a criteria for NABH (National Accreditation of the Board of Hospitals). Recommendations: Educating our Undergraduate students by including it in our curriculum will impart knowledge to them in providing end of life care in the future as physicians or surgeons in their practise.