Attitudes, Aptitudes, Barriers and Knowledge of Pain Physicians towards Palliative Care Practice – A National Survey, India

OBJECTIVES: The bio-psycho-socio-spiritual model is a common management approach in palliative care (PC) and chronic pain medicine (CPM), adopted by PC Physicians and Pain Physicians (PPs), respectively. There is a dearth of services and personnel of PC in India. As PPs are familiar with pain management and the bio-psycho-socio-spiritual model, we hypothesised that they would be willing to incorporate PC in their practice and therefore, sought to understand their attitudes/aptitudes/barriers/knowledge towards it. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We did a cross-sectional cohort study through a national survey of Indian PPs. The ten- item validated, survey questionnaire was mailed to 1300 PPs having E mail and registered with Indian Society for Study of Pain. RESULTS: We received responses from 6.6% of the PPs. About 10.39% did not want to practice PC; the rest were either practicing or wanted to, or were unable to. 81.8% had <10 years CPM experience while the rest had 10–15 years. About 53.3% PPs had <10 years’ experience in PC; 10.4% had > 10 years and the rest had not practiced. About 70% were motivated by human suffering or had “personal reasons.” About 40.26% had no barriers; the rest cited stress or lack of infrastructure/knowledge/skills/time/financial compensation. The majority chose institutional courses for training and the popular choice of duration of the course was 3 months. The opinion on financial viability/non-viability of PC was equally divided among the respondents. About 62.3% had “knowledge” but half of them lacked “skills;” 27.6% lacked both; the rest had no inclination towards PC. About a third felt multi-disciplinary care was feasible while half felt that it was partially feasible. CONCLUSION: Policy-makers, at regional to global levels are strategizing options for popularizing PC since it supports the dualistic model of cure and care, most essential for both, chronic-debilitating or life-limiting illnesses. The poor response to our survey was a major limiting factor. However, among the respondents, the majority showed both aptitude and a favourable attitude for PC practice. The inability to identify major barriers for not choosing PC did not support our hypothesis. However, we feel that PPs are a cohort who can be motivated/ encouraged to take up some form of brief, comprehensive courses in PC so that they can be conversant with the specific knowledge and skills needed to practice the multi-dimensional aspects of PC in their own settings.