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Nurses' Knowledge and Practice toward Gynecologic Oncology Palliative Care

Fatma Uslu-Sahan and Fusun Terzioglu*

Objectives: Gynecologic cancers are the second main reasons for morbidity in women following breast cancer in Turkey and globally. The majority of patients with gynecologic cancer experience recurrence and die despite aggressive treatment. Because of this, patients with gynecologic cancers remain an ideal population for palliative care. Nurses are an essential part of the palliative care team in providing high standards of care since they spend the longest time with patients. The aim of the study to assess knowledge, practice and opinions about barriers toward palliative care among nurses working in gynecologic oncology units.

Methods: The cross-sectional survey-based study was conducted nurses (N=65) working in six tertiary care hospitals’ gynecologic oncology units in Ankara Province in Turkey. For data collection a survey was used. The descriptive statistics were used in data analysis.

Results: It was determined that 52.3% of the nurses did not receive any knowledge regarding palliative care. The knowledge nurses received was mostly about communication skills (96.8%), pain management (96.8%) and symptom control (96.8%). It was found that 73.8% of the nurses did not talk about death with patients and their families. One of the most common barriers faced by nurses was opioid phobia experienced by patients (66.2%) and healthcare professionals (41.5%).

Conclusions The current study indicates the need for wider coverage of palliative care in the education of preservice and in-service nurses to increase their knowledge and therefore practice. This education needs to be comprehensive in covering the basic principles of palliative care and symptom management and it should be distributed throughout the different courses to discuss palliative care within different contexts, such as gynecologic oncology setting.