Effect of Palliative Care Education on Nurses’ Knowledge of Palliative Care among Hospital-Based Nurses in Tertiary Hospital, Rivers State

Abstract

Hospital-based nurses need to be equipped with palliative care knowledge to provide optimal care for patients and their families 
to improve quality of life of the terminally ill patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of palliative care education 
on nurses’ knowledge of palliative care among hospital-based nurses in Rivers State University Teaching Hospital (RSUTH), 
Port-Harcourt, River State. A quasi-experimental design with pretest and post-test measure was adopted. A convenience sampling 
was used to select 137 nurses from medical-surgical (n=45), gynaecology (n=22), and paediatrics (n=34) units/wards of RSUTH. 
A palliative care education module adopted from Palliative Care e-modules served as an intervention for the study. Changes in 
knowledge were measured using Palliative Care Quiz for Nursing (PCQN), Data were analysed using paired t-test to compare 
pretest and post-test scores. The results revealed that post-test PCQN knowledge of the nurses on palliative care increased from 
12.1 to 83.7 post-intervention (t = 4.116, p = 0.001 at p < 0.05), hospital-based nurses were lacking palliative care knowledge 
pre-intervention by answering 8/20 questions correctly and 18/20 questions correctly post-intervention. There was no significant 
association between socio-demographic characteristics and the knowledge toward palliative care pre-intervention (p > 0.05). 
Nurses knowledge increased after the palliative care education. It was recommended that palliative care education should be 
included in the nursing curriculum to train nurses and policy makers should build the capacity of their staff by exposing them to 
workshops, seminars, and in-service training on palliative care.