End of life care in physicians’ and nurses’ education
Keywords:
end of life education, end of life careAbstract
Introduction. Appropriate vocational education should focus on making nurses and physicians aware of the need to change the priorities of their actions when facing a patient’s death, as in such cases the emphasis should be shifted from fighting death to ensuring that the patient dies in dignity.
Aim. The aim of the research was to compare the end-of-life education of physicians and nurses and indication of areas of their educational needs regarding this topic.
Methods. The study was conducted in year of 2007 with the use of a diagnostic survey on the sample of 222 (100%) medical personnel (124 nurses and 98 physicians) working in Poland.
Findings and conclusions. Half of the nurses think that their professional training prepared them sufficiently for end of life care (49,19%). Physicians are of the opposite opinion (43,87%). According to both groups of the respondents, their education has prepared them predominantly for taking care of the physiological functions of the dying. The respondents mentioned lack of education regarding cooperation with the dying patient’s family and supporting the family members, or dealing with own emotions facing someone’s death.
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