Knowledge of Nurses About the End of Life Care Towards Terminal Illnesses: a Cross-sectional Design

The preparedness of nurses in relation to providing palliative care is not always adequate, indeed, it is sometimes unsatisfactory; this may be caused by lack of knowledge and limited experience in end-of-life care. The purposes of the study were to assess the levels of registered nurses' knowledge about end of life care (EOLC), examine the relationships between EOLC knowledge and demographic variables, and explore predictors of EOLC knowledge. A cross-sectional design survey was conducted on Jordanian registered nurses (N =220). Data analysis included descriptive statistics, correlation, and multiple regression.The results showed that End-of-Life Professional Caregiver Survey (EPCS) mean total score was moderate to high (72.1 (SD ±13.6), Range 0-112). For EPCS subscales: Patient and family-centered communication, cultural and ethical values were moderately high, while effective care delivery subscale was low. Predictors were attending training in palliative care (p = 0.02), and working in the intensive care unit (p = 0.04). Thus, nurses need palliative care education, more attention is required in palliative care education on clinical skills, as well as weakness of effective care delivery. Also build palliative education into the core nursing curriculum.