Doctors and nurses opinions on palliative care in the emergency department: example of a University Hospital in Turkey

26^th Global Nursing & Health Care Conference

May 06-07, 2019 | Rotterdam, Netherlands

Aysegul Ozturk Birge,Esra Koroglu Camdeviren

Ankara University Faculty of Nursing Turkey

Istanbul Medipol University, Turkey

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Nurs Care

Abstract :

The study is a descriptive preliminary study. It was aimed to determine the opinions of doctors and nurses about palliative care in the emergency department (ED). The data of the study were collected with the participation of 13 doctors and 14 nurses working in the ED of a University Hospital between the dates of 1-30 November, 2018. The mean age of the participants was 31.77+7.94. All of the participants stated that the patients who had palliative care need were followed up in the ED and the patients who had the most frequent cancer, end stage respiratory failure and advanced stage dementia diagnoses applied to the ED. Reasons for referring patients to the ED; the most frequent pain (48.1%), general condition disorder (25.9%) and nutritional problem (22.2%). About 96.3% of the doctors and nurses stated that palliative care should not be given in ED and 70.4% did not provide effective palliative care. The most common difficulty encountered by nurses in providing palliative care was communication (85.7%), feeding difficulty (57.1%), pain (35.7%); the doctors stated that they had feeding difficulty (92.3%), communication (53.8%), and delirium (38.8%) management. Factors that prevent the provision of palliative care in the ED according to doctors and nurses are the excess of the workload of health workers (92.6%), inadequate ED environment (88.9%), lack of 7/24 hours of consultation for palliative care (55.6%), and inability to provide psychosocial support (51.9%). Preliminary findings of study are recommended to generalize to the population after being applied to the larger sample group.

Biography :

Aysegul Ozturk Birge has completed her PhD from Cumhuriyet University Health Sciences Institute. Between 2006 and 2014, she worked as a Nurse in Otolaryngology and Plastic Reconstructive Surgery services. She is a Lecturer in Faculty of Nursing at Ankara University in Turkey. Her professional interests include Intensive Care, Palliative Care and Neurology Nursing.

E-mail: birge@ankara.edu.tr