Public Awareness toward Palliative Care: Integrative Literature Review.
Introduction.
Hospice care is the kind of medical treatment given to an individual experiencing their final stages of a terminal incident. This treatment is often accorded to individuals who are most likely to die in six months and are usually meant to give them psychological support and care during that trying phase of their illness. The program includes close observation of the patient and is usually most recommended among families with gravely ill individuals but the family wants to continue with the patient’s treatment. Hospice care ensures that the ill patient gets to spend as much time as possible being alive especially due to the close attention paid to them by the medical experts. However, not many individuals know about hospice care as will be highlighted below. This literate review highlights previous scholarly thoughts on public awareness about this medical treatment in society.
Public Awareness toward Palliative Care: Integrative Literature Review.
This review highlights the public awareness levels and attitudes towards hospice care. There were various methodologies used in the research. Cross-sectional research and survey methods using questioners were also key in the research. Despite the efforts made to increase public awareness on this medical care routine only twenty countries have adopted it. In 2009 in India, a study was conducted on 350 individuals but only 47 of them knew anything about Hospice care. In countries where palliative care is still a new concept, not many people know about the concept. However, countries such as Japan and Italy have much knowledge about the care system and the government and local health officials hold public awareness meetings about the issue. According to a questionnaire survey conducted in Japan, of the 3984 individuals interviewed using the questionnaire method, only 63.15 of them knew about the concept. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Barriers to access to palliative care.
According to Hawley, Many individuals do not receive hospice care or receive it during the last stages when it is too late (2017). This review highlights some of the reasons that limit public knowledge of hospice care. The main form of study was to study from previous articles and surveys. For instance, the study shows that most patients in the United States only receive hospice care twenty days before they die meaning that the system is slow at referring terminally ill patients in the program. Some of the reasons for individuals exclusion from hospice care include lack of public knowledge where the general public does not know that it exists. In developing countries, there are limited resources and there is a lack of these institutions as well as the lack of knowledge on their existence. Also, one of the main reasons for reluctance in involvement includes family reluctance to refer their patients to a facility to avoid disappointing the patient. However, this can be solved by having public knowledge on the issue and the government intervening to provide specialist palliative care units for the patients. Conclusively all medical staff needs to be equipped with the necessary skills to take care of chronically ill individuals. Importantly, most governments need to be responsible for funding these residential homes and medical institutions for ill individuals.
. Awareness and misperceptions of hospice and palliative care.
This is such a reliable source that can be incorporated into the research and study of the awareness level and the misconceptions surrounding hospice care. The study was conducted using a cross-sectional design and study of information from a state poll and questionnaire method. Out of the 664 individuals that responded to the poll only 60% of them were able to relate the term to end to life care treatment. However,17% of them did not have a response and did not know that it encompassed. There were also many misconceptions surrounding hospice care. Many were not fully equipped with the knowledge of what it encompassed. Many stated that they did not trust their loved ones to be well taken care of in these institutions. Many also viewed it similarly to care given to elderly people (Shalev & Phongtankuel et al 2018). This review provides knowledge of people’s awareness of hospice care. It also concluded that it was necessary to provide hospice and palliative care education to individuals to not only increase their awareness levels but to also reduce the levels of misconceptions.
Public awareness and attitudes toward palliative care in Northern Ireland
According to the World Health Organization, Hospice care is a global issue that has not yet been fully welcome. This review used the questionnaire method to interview 3557 individuals for four weeks. Although 83% of the individuals had heard about hospice care,56% of them knew its meaning and only 19% knew what it encompassed. The responses on hospice care were quite broad although the general conclusion is that most o not knows what it encompasses. Study shows that most individuals without the knowledge on hospice care have not had cases that required that treatment while the rest had not fully internalized the concept. Respondents were given the chance to suggest some of the ways that would improve their knowledge of Hospice care. Conducting public campaigns, open talks and using health professionals in the talks would be quite effective (McIlfatrick & Hasson et al2013).
Public Awareness toward Palliative care: Integrative literature review.
This review was meant to access people’s knowledge of hospice and palliative care. For most countries, the populations’ access and knowledge of hospice care are limited to how long the care has been in existence in these countries. Countries such as Australia and New Zealand are highly knowledgeable on the concept and this issue to the national guidelines put in place and actively operating programs. Similarly, countries such as India have low knowledge if the concept and few have access to such facilities. The study uses literate research from databases such as MEDLINE but was also boosted with quantitative research methods in the research. Findings concluded that public knowledge of hospice care is not only associated with the length or period of establishment and not as a result of poor service distribution. Just like other reviews, this review advocates for public sensitization on the issue for individuals to have enough knowledge of the concept.
Conclusively, the above review encompasses hospice care and the perceptions that people have about it. Most highlighted that many individuals are not familiar with the concept or are not fully aware of what it encompasses. However, most of these reviews also provided analytically researched findings on how the concept could be adopted and provide public knowledge about it.
References
al-atiyyat, Nijmeh & Gazo, Mohammed. (2015). Public Awareness toward Palliative Care: Integrative Literature Review. Journal of Health, Medicine and Nursing. 19. 67-70.
Hawley, P. (2017). Barriers to access to palliative care. Palliative Care: Research and Treatment, 10, 1178224216688887.
McIlfatrick, S., Hasson, F., McLaughlin, D., Johnston, G., Roulston, A., Rutherford, L., … & Kernohan, W. G. (2013). Public awareness and attitudes toward palliative care in Northern Ireland. BMC palliative care, 12(1), 34.
Shalev, A., Phongtankuel, V., Kozlov, E., Shen, M. J., Adelman, R. D., & Reid, M. C. (2018). Awareness and misperceptions of hospice and palliative care: a population-based survey study. American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine®, 35(3), 431-439.