Effect of Knowledge on Evaluations of Palliative Care as an Appropriate Treatment Intervention

Abstract

Palliative care is a treatment approach specifically designed to help patients and caregivers manage the physical, psychological, and social burdens that accompany chronic or life-threatening diseases. Despite the research supporting its inclusion in standard care for a number of diseases, the gap between those who would benefit from palliative care services and those who receive them continues to widen. A critical part of improving utilization of palliative care services includes understanding the barriers that restrict access. Lack of knowledge of palliative care has been identified as a persistent barrier to utilization. Many in the general public have not heard of it and, for those who have, there is still a great degree of uncertainty about its design and purpose. Using a vignette design, this study set out to test the effectiveness of an educational intervention to improve palliative care knowledge and to examine how pre-existing knowledge impacts individuals’ evaluations of the applicability or helpfulness of palliative care for a fictional patient. It was hypothesized that a brief educational intervention would be sufficient to improve knowledge of palliative care and lead to improved evaluations of palliative care. It was also hypothesized that those with less pre-existing knowledge of palliative care would make different evaluations based on diagnosis or disease stage. Data were collected online from 331 participants. Results found that the educational intervention broadly improved participant knowledge of palliative care and those who received the intervention gave higher evaluations of palliative care. Diagnosis and disease type were not found to have an effect on evaluations of palliative care; however, pre-existing knowledge was found to have an effect such that those individuals with greater levels of pre-existing knowledge gave higher evaluations of palliative care. The results of this study highlight one way in which lack of knowledge about palliative care acts as a barrier to those services. This information can be used to guide public health education efforts to improve awareness of the services and benefits of palliative care.