Assessment of Attitude and Knowledge Towards the End- Of-Life Care Amongst Nurses Working at Kigali University Teaching Hospital, Rwanda

BACKGROUND: To provide quality end of life care, nurses must have a good level of knowledge and an appropriate attitude towards palliative care (PC). PC is conventionally regarded as the care of a moribund patient. The scope of PC now also covers patients suffering from a chronic disease. At Kigali University Teaching Hospital (CHUK), no dedicated unit for PC exists- instead, there is an integrated service offered to patients wherever they are admitted.
This study aimed at assessing nurses’ attitudes and knowledge towards palliative and end of life care amongst nurses at CHUK.
METHODS: A hospital-based descriptive, cross-sectional quantitative study carried out on 160 nurses working at CHUK. The Frommelt’s Attitude Towards Care of the Dying (FATCOD) Scale and Palliative Care Quiz for Nursing (PCQN) were used to assess the knowledge and attitude towards palliative and end of life care. SPSS 20.0 was used for analysis.
RESULTS: 160 nurses participated in the study, 53.7% had a favorable attitude towards PC and end of life care, while 56% of responders had poor overall knowledge towards PC with a mean score of 5.76 (SD± 2.08). There was a statistically significant relationship between nurses’ working experience in caring for terminally ill patients with their attitude towards end-of-life care (p-value 0.002) and no statistical difference between the mean scores of nurses’ knowledge towards PC and their level of education (p-value 0.7).
CONCLUSION: The nurses' attitude towards PC and end of life care was favorable but they had poor knowledge.