Home Care Nurses’ Attitude Towards and Knowledge of Home Palliative Care in Iran: A Cross-Sectional Study

BACKGROUND: Chronic and cancer diseases are expected to rise with the growing population of the elderly in the world. Home palliative care might be a possible solution for improving these patients' quality of life; therefore, the present study sets out to investigate home care nurses' attitude towards and knowledge of home palliative care. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study (2018-19), in which 168 home care nurses and nursing assistants in East Azerbaijan Province (Iran) were included (2018). The questionnaire used was specifically designed by Shimizu et al. in 2016 for determining the nurses' attitude towards and knowledge of home care. Data analysis was carried out using descriptive and inferential statistics (T-test and ANOVA). RESULTS: In this study, 95 (56.60%) and 113 (67.90%) of the participants were found to have negative attitudes and limited knowledge, respectively. The other participants seemed to have neutral attitudes towards and average knowledge of home palliative care. The Mean (SD) attitude score on terminal home care was estimated 2.33 (0.83), and the knowledge score on dying care was calculated 41.76%, which were the lowest in comparison with the scores of other dimensions. CONCLUSIONS: The home care nurses' attitude towards and knowledge of home palliative care were found to be negative and limited, respectively, which underscores the need to endeavor to improve the attitude towards home care and the knowledge of dying care.