Background & aim: Due to the increase of chronic and incurable patients, the need for palliative care in nursing is essential. Nurses need to acquire special knowledge and skills to provide quality palliative care. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between palliative care knowledge and the level of anxiety, stress and depression of special care nurses in hospitals affiliated to Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences in 1400.
Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted with the participation of 77 nurses working in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Ali Ibn Abi Talib (AS) Rafsanjan Hospital in 1400. The level of knowledge of nurses was measured using the PCNQ questionnaire and the level of anxiety and depression was measured using the DASS-21 questionnaire.
s 33.34 ± 5.17; The majority of them were women (62 people, 80.88%), single (53 people, 68.78%) and with work experience of more than ten years (36 people, 46.66%). The knowledge of nurses was checked through the PCQN questionnaire, which includes 20 questions with yes or no answers, and the participant receives a score of one for a correct answer and a score of zero for a wrong answer. The range of scores of the questionnaire is from a minimum of zero to a maximum of twenty, and a score of 15 and above indicates sufficient knowledge in the field of palliative care. The questions of this questionnaire include: principles and philosophy dimension, pain management dimension and palliative care spiritual services dimension. The average score was 2.65 ± 0.40 in principles and philosophy, 3.37 ± 13.89 in pain management, and 1.86 ± 0.97 in spiritual services. The total mean score of nurses' knowledge of palliative care was 2.7 ± 0.72. Moderate to very severe anxiety, stress and depression were seen in all nurses of the ICU. So that 48.1% had moderate depression, 31.2% had very severe stress and 50.6% had very severe anxiety. According to the results of the correlation analysis, no significant correlation was observed between the overall PCQN score and anxiety, stress and depression.
Conclusion: The palliative care knowledge of special care nurses is insufficient, therefore, in order to fill this knowledge gap, it is suggested to develop comprehensive training programs for bedside nurses and provide palliative care topics in nursing undergraduate courses. In addition, the level of anxiety, stress and depression of nurses in special care departments is relatively high. Accordingly, no significant relationship was observed between palliative care knowledge and anxiety, stress and depression.