Knowledge and Attitude of Staff Nurses Regarding Palliative Care

Palliative care is an emerging area of medicine that aims to improve the quality of life of patients with chronic diseases such as cancer, end stage renal failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and so on. The palliative care team usually consists of nurses, doctors, pharmacists, social workers, spiritual leaders and psychologists. Objectives To assess the level of knowledge and attitude of staff nurses regarding palliative care, to identify the association between knowledge and attitude regarding palliative care with selected socio-personal variables and to determine the correlation between knowledge and attitude regarding palliative care. Methodology The research approach used in this study is Quantitative and the Design adopted is descriptive. Sample includes the staff nurses in Sree Gokulam Medical College and Research Foundation, Venjaramoodu and sample size was 200. Sampling Technique used was convenient sampling. Tools include a socio-personal performa, a semi-structured questionnaire to assess the knowledge and FATCOD attitude scale to assess the attitude. Data collection technique was self reporting. Results The study finding revealed that 20 % of staff nurses have adequate knowledge while majority (69 %) were having moderate knowledge and 11 % were having poor knowledge. Majority of the subjects (79.5 %) were having moderate attitude regarding palliative care, 17.5 % were having adequate attitude while 3 % were having poor attitude. The correlation co-efficient value obtained was 0.272 which suggest a weak positive correlation between knowledge score and attitude score of staff nurses regarding palliative care.