Attitudes and Opinons of Family Medicine Residents Towards the System of Palliative Care in Croatia

Ema Slapnicar, Marion Tomicic

Keywords: family medicine residents, palliative care, Croatia

Background:

Palliative care is characterised by comprehensive approach to patients who suffer from incurable diseases, aiming to improve their quality of life through alleviation of pain and suffering and prevention of complications. Primary palliative care is provided by family medicine specialist in cooperation with the multidisciplinary team and the patient’s family.

Research questions:

1. To determine the attitudes and opinions of family medicine residents towards the system of palliative care in Croatia.
2. Whether there is connection between length of service and expressed positive attitudes towards palliative care.

Method:

The data was collected using a survey questionnaire in Google Forms application. Questionnaire comprised eight sociodemographic questions and a five-point Likert scale that contained 15 statements about residents’ opinions, attitudes and knowledge of palliative care system in Croatia. Participants were first-year family medicine residents. Total number of 95 respondents participated in the study (59% of all first-year family medicine residents in Croatia).

Results:

Family medicine residents do not feel sufficiently competent in counselling patients in matters of palliative care. Only 11% of respondents attended additional education in field of palliative care. Just 17% of respondents expressed familiarity with the National Program for the Development of Palliative Care in Croatia. Only 21% of respondents claim that they feel confident when they need to inform patient about possibilities that palliative care offers. The length of service of the respondents did not have a statistically significant effect (p value=0.0614) on the attitudes and opinions of residents towards palliative care, as well as their additional education.

Conclusions:

Although in recent years there has been progress in the organization and implementation of palliative care in Croatia, it is not yet at the desired level of development. The first step in improving the quality of palliative care is the education of all members of healthcare team who provide basic palliative care.

Points for discussion:

How to achieve useful education of family medicine residents in matters of palliative care?

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