Final published version
Licence: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - What do young doctors know of palliative care
T2 - how do they expect the concept to work?
AU - Gunasekara Vidana Mestrige Fernando, Chamath
AU - Prathapan, Shamini
PY - 2019/7/16
Y1 - 2019/7/16
N2 - Discipline of palliative care is still evolving in developed parts of the world while it remains at an infantile stage in Sri Lanka which has not been formally assessed as of today. We aimed at evaluating the level of palliative care knowledge and opinions among young medical graduates. A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out among pre-residency medical graduates of Sri Lanka through a social media based online survey. The pre-tested questionnaire assessed the level of knowledge on general principles, service organization, clinical management and ethical considerations while it also evaluated their opinions. Response rate was 35.8% (n = 351). The average score among the respondents was 37.25% [standard deviation (SD) = 11.975]. Specific knowledge on “general principles” was adequate (score ≥ 50%) with an average of 62.61%, SD = 24.5 while “ethics” was observed to be the area with the poorest knowledge (average score = 19.55%, SD = 22). Average scores for “service organization” and “managerial aspects” were 34.54%, SD = 17.6 and 32.26%, SD = 22.3, respectively. The majority (> 90%) believed that de-novo establishment of hospice, hospital and community-based palliative services would sustainably improve holistic patient care. Measures must be taken to optimize basic palliative care knowledge among the undergraduates in view of achieving Universal Health Coverage in the long term.
AB - Discipline of palliative care is still evolving in developed parts of the world while it remains at an infantile stage in Sri Lanka which has not been formally assessed as of today. We aimed at evaluating the level of palliative care knowledge and opinions among young medical graduates. A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out among pre-residency medical graduates of Sri Lanka through a social media based online survey. The pre-tested questionnaire assessed the level of knowledge on general principles, service organization, clinical management and ethical considerations while it also evaluated their opinions. Response rate was 35.8% (n = 351). The average score among the respondents was 37.25% [standard deviation (SD) = 11.975]. Specific knowledge on “general principles” was adequate (score ≥ 50%) with an average of 62.61%, SD = 24.5 while “ethics” was observed to be the area with the poorest knowledge (average score = 19.55%, SD = 22). Average scores for “service organization” and “managerial aspects” were 34.54%, SD = 17.6 and 32.26%, SD = 22.3, respectively. The majority (> 90%) believed that de-novo establishment of hospice, hospital and community-based palliative services would sustainably improve holistic patient care. Measures must be taken to optimize basic palliative care knowledge among the undergraduates in view of achieving Universal Health Coverage in the long term.
KW - Medical student and resident education
KW - Palliative care
KW - Palliative medicine
KW - Education
KW - Medical
KW - Undergraduate
U2 - 10.1186/s13104-019-4462-2
DO - 10.1186/s13104-019-4462-2
M3 - Journal article
VL - 12
JO - BMC Research Notes
JF - BMC Research Notes
SN - 1756-0500
IS - 1
M1 - 419
ER -