Assessment of Psychosocial Distress among the Palliative Care Patients in Wardha District of Maharashtra

AIM: Palliative Care Outcome Scale (POS) is one of the various tools, available for the evaluation of the effectiveness of palliative services, having 10item multidimensional questionnaire, designed to assess the physical, psychosocial, spiritual, and practical aspects of patients with various sufferings. In this study, we had assessed psychosocial distress among the patients of a palliative care clinic of a rural teaching hospital at Wardha district. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, a total of 118 patients attending the palliative care clinic under the medicine department were enrolled between July 2018 and March 2019. POS has 10 questions in Likert type of scale with a scoring of 0–4, 0 for no effect to 4 for overwhelming effect. Each question provides the information regarding how the patient feels in the past 3 days. RESULTS: In the first assessment for anxiety about illness or treatment, 32% of the participants reply that they occasionally feel the anxiety, whereas the same reply has been given in follow-up assessment by 34% of the participants, with an average mean score of 1.59 and 1.31, respectively. Approximately 48% of the participants feel that their family or friends were occasionally anxious and worried for them in the first assessment of POS compared to follow-up assessment where the feeling has been changed with approximately 46% for not at all anxious or worried followed by 39% occasionally. CONCLUSION: Participants were satisfied and accepted the palliative care treatment provided by the team with frequent visits, and also, the level of improvement fastens.