The leading cause of death in Taiwan is cancer, there are 37,998 Taiwanese and 1,806 persons in Yunlin county dying of cancer in 2006. Because of only one district general hospital providing hospice care, the accessibility of hospice and palliative care (HPC) is obviously inadequate. Nurses play an important role in the care approach of terminally ill patients and their families. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to explore the cognition, attitudes and the perspectives of education and training course of nurses regarding HPC, We adopted the purposive sampling method, and used a self-administered structured questionnaire to collect data from 709 nurses in Yunlin county. There were 524 nurses recruited for this study. The results are analyzed and summarized as follows: (1) Most of nurses have a positive cognition and attitudes regarding HPC, and the average score are 3.95 on a 5 point scale. (2) 63.4% of nurses were willing to participate in hospice care. (3) HPC-related cognition of nurses were significantly associated with their attitudes, and the HPC education and training (p<0.01). (4) 96.2% of nurses agreed with the effects of HPC training program, and most of them were likely to participate in the HPC training course. The results indicated that nurses' knowledge of HPC was not inadequate and that their attitudes toward HPC were positive. We conclude that our results of this study can be provided as reference in in-service training on hospice care.
The leading cause of death in Taiwan is cancer, there are 37,998 Taiwanese and 1,806 persons in Yunlin county dying of cancer in 2006. Because of only one district general hospital providing hospice care, the accessibility of hospice and palliative care (HPC) is obviously inadequate. Nurses play an important role in the care approach of terminally ill patients and their families. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to explore the cognition, attitudes and the perspectives of education and training course of nurses regarding HPC, We adopted the purposive sampling method, and used a self-administered structured questionnaire to collect data from 709 nurses in Yunlin county. There were 524 nurses recruited for this study. The results are analyzed and summarized as follows: (1) Most of nurses have a positive cognition and attitudes regarding HPC, and the average score are 3.95 on a 5 point scale. (2) 63.4% of nurses were willing to participate in hospice care. (3) HPC-related cognition of nurses were significantly associated with their attitudes, and the HPC education and training (p<0.01). (4) 96.2% of nurses agreed with the effects of HPC training program, and most of them were likely to participate in the HPC training course. The results indicated that nurses' knowledge of HPC was not inadequate and that their attitudes toward HPC were positive. We conclude that our results of this study can be provided as reference in in-service training on hospice care.