Abstract
Background Palliative care is a multidisciplinary team-based care for patients facing life-threatening illness and their families which addresses their physical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs to improve the quality of care. There is a strategy for an increase in palliative care services by integrating with the healthcare system. Therefore, this systematic review and meta-analysis was aimed to assess the overall pooled prevalence of nurses' knowledge towards palliative care in Ethiopia. Method PubMed/MEDLINE, HINARI, EMBASE, Scopus, Google Scholar, and African Journals OnLine (AJOL) were the databases used to search for articles. Cochrane I2 statistics and Egger's test were done to check heterogeneity and publication bias, respectively. Subgroup analysis by region, study period, and sample size was done due to the presence of heterogeneity. Sensitivity analysis was also done to detect the presence or absence of an influential study. Result Nine studies with a total of 2709 study participants were included in the final analysis. The overall pooled prevalence of nurses' knowledge towards palliative care was 45.57% (95% CI: 35.27–55.87). Educational status and palliative care training were significantly associated factors with the level of nurses' knowledge towards palliative care. B.S. degree holder nurses (AOR = 3.01; 95% CI: 1.50–6.02) and nurses who had palliative care training (AOR = 4.64; 95% CI: 2.37–9.08) were found to be significantly associated factors with the nurses' level of knowledge. Conclusion More than half of nurses had poor knowledge of palliative care. Educational status of nurses and palliative care training were significantly associated factors with the nurses' level of knowledge about palliative care. Therefore, palliative care training and improving nurses' careers through continuous professional development should be focused on regularly to improve nurses' knowledge about palliative care.
Highlights
Palliative care is the science of promoting the quality of life patients and their families, which is effective in the patient’s late life and useful in relieving suffering from life-threatening terminal illness through early identification, correct assessment, treatment of pain, and other problems
In this systematic review and meta-analysis, PubMed/MEDLINE, HINARI, EMBASE, Google scholar, and African Journals OnLine (AJOL) searching databases were used. e published and unpublished articles from the repositories of Ethiopian universities were searched. e searching date ranged from September 1 to September 23, 2020
Despite the understanding of the benefits of palliative care, many people living with chronic lifethreatening illnesses do not receive palliative care. e primary challenges to apply palliative care are an overestimation of patient progress by health professionals and a low level of knowledge about palliative care
Summary
Palliative care is the science of promoting the quality of life patients (adults and children) and their families, which is effective in the patient’s late life and useful in relieving suffering from life-threatening terminal illness through early identification, correct assessment, treatment of pain, and other problems. Palliative care can benefit approximately 75% of people approaching the end of life. Nurses need to be equipped with palliative care knowledge to provide optimal care for patients suffering from chronic and serious illness and their families to improve their quality of life. Nurses must provide quality care to terminally ill and chronically sick patients. To improve the quality of life of the patients, nurses must have good knowledge of palliative care. Little is known regarding palliative care preparedness among Ethiopian nurses. us, this systematic review and meta-analysis was designed to identify the level of knowledge about palliative care and associated factors among nurses in Ethiopia
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