Nursing Students’ Understanding of Palliative Care in Palestine

Abstract

Palliative care is a method of preventing and alleviating suffering for patients who have been di- agnosed with terminal diseases by early detection, accurate assessments, and pain and symptom management. Patients and their families can then mitigate related physical, psychological, and spiritual challenges and thus will have a better quality of life. This article reports a study that evaluated undergraduate nursing students’ knowledge of and attitude and self-efficacy toward pal- liative and end-of-life care in Palestine. A descriptive, cross-sectional design was used among a convenience sample of 449 undergraduate nursing students at the end of their second, third, and fourth years. The results of this research revealed that nursing students had low levels of knowl- edge about palliative care and low self-efficacy toward end-of-life care. The majority of students reported a positive disposition toward the provision of end-of-life care. The most important pre- dictors of knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy were age, having attended a seminar/lecture on the issue, experiencing death while providing care, and having experienced a death in the fam- ily or close friends. Furthermore, elevated levels of knowledge were significantly associated with higher level of attitude (P < .001) about palliative care. Key words: education, end-of-life care, nursing students, palliative care