Palliative Care Education Program and Cognitive Competencies Among Nurses in a Selected Government Hospital in Pampanga, Philippines
Creators: name: Razon, Sandra Lou M.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019
Subjects: subject: Education
subject: Cognitive Science
subject: Palliative Medicine
subject: Nursing
subject: FOS: Health sciences

description: Background: Palliative Care is a specialized care given or provided to patients and<br> their families at any time or any stage from the diagnosis of a serious illness. Palliative<br> care provides for basic needs which comes along with curative interventions with the<br> goal of providing the best possible quality of life for patients and their families. Nurses<br> specialized in palliative care assists patients with their common symptoms to gain<br> strength to carry on with their daily activities. The study aims to determine the cognitive competencies of nurses on five (5)<br> domains which are knowledge of symptom management, use of assessment systems,<br> team skills, interpersonal skills, and life closure skills.<br> Watsons (2008) theoretical propositions on transpersonal caring served as<br> background concept. This is within the context of a caring relationship, coaching,<br> mentoring relationship towards development of cognitive competencies to improve<br> decision-making skills and provide quality safe care. Objectives: The objectives of the research are to determine the cognitive competencies before and after the Palliative Care Education Program on five domains:<br> knowledge of symptom management, use of assessment system, team skills,<br> interpersonal skills and life closure skills, to determine the differences in cognitive<br> competencies before and after Palliative Care Education Program, to determine the<br> relationship between nurses’ characteristics (experience in Palliative Care, Education<br> and Training in Palliative Care, Spirituality, and Personal experience on death and<br> dying); and cognitive competencies on Palliative Care and to describe how Palliative<br> Care Education Program change nurses perception on Palliative Care.<br> This study contributes to nursing literature in the Philippines on Palliative Care Education and<br> Cognitive Competencies within the context of transpersonal caring. Methods: A pretest- posttest one-group design was used. Purposive sampling was used consisting of nurses from the Palliaitve Services<br> and related units of a training hospital. The intervention titled; “Palliative Care<br> Education Program” was developed for this study with experts consultation. The<br> training program of two days (16hours) included varied teaching-learning activities.<br> The research tools are the Nurses’ Core Competency in Palliative Care (NCCPC,<br> 2007) and the Palliative Care Quiz for Nurses (PCQN, 2017). Permission was granted<br> for the use of the tools. Research ethics approval from the University of the Philippines<br> Open University as well as from the training institution. 28 nurses (n=28) participated in the study, 43% of the age range 31 to 40 years<br> greater percentage were males and 1 has doctoral degree. Most participants (61%)<br> had no work experience in Palliative Care and most (93%) had no training in Palliative<br> Care. Of the five (5) domains, better mean score change was reported in Knowledge<br> of Symptom Management and Team Skills. The results further showed improvement<br> in post mean scores of the Palliative Care Quiz on the areas of Philosophy and<br> Principles of Palliative Care, Pain and Symptom Management and Psychosocial and<br> Spiritual Care. On the variables, sex and family experience with death and dying, these<br> were associated with cognitive competencies of nurses. The nurses described their<br> experiences of increased awareness of the scientific bases of intervention in palliative<br> care interventions and had gained better understanding of the patient situation. Nurses’ cognitive competencies improved after palliative care education. It was<br> recommended that palliative care education should be included as part of a continuous<br> education program for nurses.