Knowledge of nurses on palliative care for internal medicine inpatients
Keywords:
Bereavement care, Terminal care, Terminally ill, Palliative careAbstract
Introduction: The care of the patient in terminal stage is becoming increasingly important within the health system and the patient should avoid suffering in the final stage of his life. That is why health professionals must be committed to work together, in order to apply the knowledge and skills and change the attitudes of nurses to effectively carry out palliative care to the suffering and death.
Objective: To determine the level of knowledge of palliative care by the nursing staff.
Methodology: It was carried out a descriptive, transversal study, with 41 nurses of the Internal Medicine department of an area general hospital. Information was collected on a multiple-choice questionnaire, which was based on the level of knowledge of palliative care in various chronic diseases. The information obtained was processed in Word and Excel, and descriptive statistics was applied.
Results: Of the staff, 80.49% knows about palliative care, and 19.51% do not have enough knowledge of what is palliative care.
Conclusions: It is extremely important that nursing staff assigned to internal medicine in area general hospitals have a sufficient level of knowledge about what palliative care is and what it encompasses, in order to provide quality care to avoid the pain and suffering of the terminally ill.
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