Abstract
Heart failure (HF) is a chronic, progressive disease that affects 6 million Americans (Ng & Wong, 2017). During the course of the disease, patients have worsening symptoms and need increasing levels of care from both medical staff and home caregivers. Often, these caregivers are family members or friends who spend a significant amount of their free time assisting the patient, leading to significant stress and burden on the caregivers. Recent changes in recommendations from the American Heart Association (AHA) include Palliative Care (PC) consultation for patients diagnosed with advanced stage heart failure, but many physicians have not included a PC consult in their usual care (Kavalieratos et al., 2017). Significant stigma exists related to the use of palliative care including negative stereotypes and labelling users of palliative care as “quitters” or “weak” (Shen and Wellman, 2019). Education and experiences with PC have the potential to decrease this stigma and increase the use of PC for patients who would benefit from it (Malloy, et al., 2014). Seven nurses received palliative care training and were given a pre- and post-test consisting of the PCQN and the PPACD to determine their knowledge and attitudes of palliative care. The results of post-intervention testing showed an increase in PCQN scores of 5% and an increase in perception of ability to care for the dying as interpreted by the PPACD scale, but neither of these results were statistically significant.
Date of publication
Spring 4-21-2021
Document Type
MSN Capstone Project
Language
english
Persistent identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/10950/3680
Degree
Masters in Nursing - Education
Recommended Citation
Kerr, Daniel, "Effects of Palliative Care on Nurses’ Knowledge and Attitudes" (2021). MSN Capstone Projects. Paper 103.
http://hdl.handle.net/10950/3680