Survey Study of Awareness and Perception of Palliative and Hospice Care in a Cancer Center in Rural Pennsylvania

Purpose: Hospice and palliative medicine (HPM) have been gaining ground especially in large urban settings. However, less is known about their perception in small rural areas. This study assessed the awareness and perception of a rural oncology population of this field and the effects of prognosis on their awareness. Methods: Subjects were patients of the community cancer center in rural Clarion County, Pennsylvania, who volunteered to complete a short nine-question survey (supplemental figure). Results were analyzed based on completed surveys. Results: A total of 65 surveys were collected from the Cancer Center at the Clarion Hospital. Among these patients, 54% stated that they have heard of palliative and hospice medicine. When correlating patient-reported prognosis with their awareness of palliative and hospice care, 100% of the patients with poor prognosis were aware of palliative or hospice care, respectively. In contrast, only <20% of patients with reported good prognosis were aware of HPM. Conclusions: Our study has shown that the awareness of HPM in rural areas is improving. It was observed that more patients are aware of HPM is when their prognosis was poor as compared with those who reported good prognosis.