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Research article
Healthcare Providers’ Knowledge and Their Perceived Factors Influencing Cancer Palliative Care Services in Kwazulu-natal
Minenhle Dlamini
University of KwaZulu-Natal College of Health Sciences
Corresponding Author
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8056-5735
License:
This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License. Read Full License
Background: Healthcare providers spend most of their time in direct care of critically ill patients. The family members of the critically ill patients are not spared from managing physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual symptoms, yet many of them feel anxious and unprepared to care for palliative patients. The purpose of this study was to determine healthcare providers’ knowledge and perceived factors influencing cancer palliative care (PC) services in the selected sites of Durban and Pietermaritzburg, KZN.
Methods: This was a mixed methods study using a structured questionnaire and focus group discussions (FGDs) for quantitative and qualitative aspects, respectively. All healthcare providers were selected through convenience sampling, based on being relevant to the study objectives. Twenty-seven healthcare providers participated in structured questionnaires with eight being further selected to participate in an FGD based on being information-rich. IBM SPSS Statistics (v.25) and NVIVO 12 Pro software were used to analyze quantitative and qualitative data, respectively.
Results: The mean (+SD) age of the 27 participants was 42.52 (+11.37) years and about 48.1% were within the age-group 31–40 years. The majority of participants were females (77.7%) and were married (59.5%). More than four-fifths (81.5%) had attended up to tertiary level as the highest level of education, 85.1% were permanently employed and 96.3% were from urban areas. The majority of participants had been trained in PC (70.4%), 55.5% had less than five years’ experience working as palliative healthcare providers and 51.8% rated their experience of caring for cancer patients as good. Perceived barriers in patients seeking PC, included three themes, namely: (1) effects of intra-departmental collaboration, (2) caregivers’ perspectives regarding the complexities of PC seeking barriers and (3) innate factors that sustain the community caregivers’ motivation.
Conclusion: Healthcare providers trained and/or implementing PC have varying levels of competencies, suggesting a need for continuous professional development (CPD) to build PC skills. The results also provided clear evidence that collaboration among the stakeholders within the Department of Health can potentially enhance PC service delivery in KwaZulu-Natal.
Keywords
Cancer, palliative care, community caregivers, healthcare providers
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This is a preprint. It has not completed peer review.
Research article
Healthcare Providers’ Knowledge and Their Perceived Factors Influencing Cancer Palliative Care Services in Kwazulu-natal
Minenhle Dlamini
University of KwaZulu-Natal College of Health Sciences
Corresponding Author
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8056-5735
Badges
Prescreen
This manuscript passed our Prescreen assessment
Complete author information
Appropriate declaration statements
Potential risks to human health
Prescreen
History
CURRENT STATUS: Posted
Version 1
Posted 06 Jan, 2020
No community comments so far
Metrics
Comments: 0
PDF Downloads: ...
HTML Views: ...
License:
This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License. Read Full License
Background: Healthcare providers spend most of their time in direct care of critically ill patients. The family members of the critically ill patients are not spared from managing physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual symptoms, yet many of them feel anxious and unprepared to care for palliative patients. The purpose of this study was to determine healthcare providers’ knowledge and perceived factors influencing cancer palliative care (PC) services in the selected sites of Durban and Pietermaritzburg, KZN.
Methods: This was a mixed methods study using a structured questionnaire and focus group discussions (FGDs) for quantitative and qualitative aspects, respectively. All healthcare providers were selected through convenience sampling, based on being relevant to the study objectives. Twenty-seven healthcare providers participated in structured questionnaires with eight being further selected to participate in an FGD based on being information-rich. IBM SPSS Statistics (v.25) and NVIVO 12 Pro software were used to analyze quantitative and qualitative data, respectively.
Results: The mean (+SD) age of the 27 participants was 42.52 (+11.37) years and about 48.1% were within the age-group 31–40 years. The majority of participants were females (77.7%) and were married (59.5%). More than four-fifths (81.5%) had attended up to tertiary level as the highest level of education, 85.1% were permanently employed and 96.3% were from urban areas. The majority of participants had been trained in PC (70.4%), 55.5% had less than five years’ experience working as palliative healthcare providers and 51.8% rated their experience of caring for cancer patients as good. Perceived barriers in patients seeking PC, included three themes, namely: (1) effects of intra-departmental collaboration, (2) caregivers’ perspectives regarding the complexities of PC seeking barriers and (3) innate factors that sustain the community caregivers’ motivation.
Conclusion: Healthcare providers trained and/or implementing PC have varying levels of competencies, suggesting a need for continuous professional development (CPD) to build PC skills. The results also provided clear evidence that collaboration among the stakeholders within the Department of Health can potentially enhance PC service delivery in KwaZulu-Natal.
Figure 1