Empowering Nurses in Providing Palliative Care to Cancer Patients: Action Research Study

BACKGROUND: Chronic diseases such as cancer would lead to various health needs in patients and their families. To meet needs, developing new educational nursing courses is necessary. Therefore this study was conducted to empower nurses through designing and conducting short-term educational courses for training palliative care nurses. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study was a community-based action research which was conducted at Isfahan hospitals that provide services for cancer patients during 2015 at four stages (planning, acting, reflection, and evaluation). Participants (33 samples) included nurses, head nurses, managers of nursing services, nursing professors and professors of oncology department. Data were gathered through individual and group interviews and analyzed using content analysis. RESULTS: Data analysis resulted in 3 categories of "professional development of nursing in palliative care" which included subcategories of: knowledge-based performance and positive change in attitude, "obstacles to provide palliative care" with subcategories of: insufficient professional responsibility, insufficient ability in managing some of patients’ symptoms and inappropriate interaction between nurses and physicians and "strategies for improving provision of palliative care" with subcategories of: improving the interactions between physicians and nurses, continuous trainings for palliative care and the necessity of developing palliative care in the country. CONCLUSIONS: To facilitate the process of providing palliative care to cancer patients, necessary actions and measures must be conducted including improvement of interaction between the members of health team, organizing continuing educational courses on palliative care and development of providing palliative care all over the country by managers of health centers.