Assessment of Nurses? Knowledge, Attitude and Associated Factors towards Palliative Care in Lubumbashi's Hospitals

To provide quality care at the end of life or for chronically sick patients such as cancer, nurses must have good knowledge, attitude and practice about palliative care (PC). In Democratic Republic of the Congo, PC is a new concept and very little is known about the type of services offered and the readiness of nurses to provide PC. A cross-sectional descriptive study design was carried out using 112 nurses working in selected hospitals in Lubumbashi from February 2017 to March 2017, which were selected on the basis of the existence within the institution of Intensive Care Unitable of management of patients at the end-of-life with chronic diseases. A self-administered French questionnaire was used for data collection. The researchers used triangulation in their study method making use of Frommelt's Attitude Toward Care of the Dying (FATCOD) Scale, Palliative Care Quiz for Nursing (PCQN) and practice questions. This led to enhanced validity of the data. Excel and SPSS 23 software statistical packages were applied for data entry and analysis. Descriptive statistics and bivariate statistical analysis were fitted to identify significantly associated factors with knowledge and attitude towards palliative care. The majority of nurses 57 (50.9%) had above 15 years of experience, 58% of them had less than 2 years of experience in terminal and 90.2% hadn?t obtained training course. Out of the total study participants, 69 (70.5%) had poor knowledge level of palliative care, and only 33 (29.5%) had good knowledge. The most respondents' attitudes levels towards palliative care were positive attitude 66 (58.9%) and 46 (6.2%) negative attitude level. The nurses had poor knowledge, but their attitude towards PC was favorable. Educational status of nurses was significantly associated with Knowledge nurses towards PC. Furthermore, educational status of nurses, No PC training, Hospital institutions and the age of nurses were statistically significant with attitude of nurses towards PC. Palliative care training and continuous professional education should be regularly given for the nurses.