Search

Objective: To understand the knowledge and awareness of palliative care in the Italian-speaking Swiss general population, describing main misconceptions or false beliefs and their relationship with attitudes towards palliative care., Methods: Cross-sectional representative population survey (N = 313)., Results: We observed a high awareness of «palliative care,» although it is mainly associated with pain management and the very last days of life. While false beliefs are relatively rare, there is low awareness of goals, targets, and services offered by palliative care. Overall the Italian-speaking Swiss population has a good predisposition towards palliative care, but negative attitudes are more common among those who lack knowledge. More than one-third of respondents are interested in receiving more information about palliative care, especially from their healthcare providers or through dedicated information points., Conclusion and Practice Implications: Health communication interventions to promote palliative care are needed because there is still significant unclarity about the goals of palliative care, which negatively affects its acceptance. This study instructs on how to intervene specifically in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, including what to communicate and how. Further, our findings can inspire similar studies in other Swiss regions or countries that can optimize recognition, knowledge, and understanding and contribute to filling gaps in populations' health service demand and utilization., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Diviani et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

As life expectancy has increased, a growing number of people experience conditions, including cancers, that carry complex health and social needs. Palliative care services have the potential to address these needs but face significant obstacles. One major obstacle is suboptimal interprofessional collaboration. This study's goal was an in-depth exploration of interactional and organizational barriers and supports of collaboration in palliative care in Switzerland. We sought the perspectives of health care professionals, patients' family members and leaders and experts in oncology/palliative care delivery (key informants) through interviews and focus groups with fifty HPs and key informants and ten patients' family members. Qualitative analyses of interviews and focus groups used framework analysis. We identified three major themes of interaction: personal characteristics, communication, and connectedness with other health care professionals; and three major organizational themes: service characteristics, standardized communication and processes, and service coordination and promotion. Based on our findings, we recommend that health care professionals consider strategies to increase their collaboration and communication skills and opportunities to interact. We advocate the implementation of methods for coordinating services, standardization of consultation/referral procedures and communication between health care professionals, and the promotion of underutilized services to foster successful, sustainable collaboration., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Background: The ability to critically appraise health information-often referred to as critical health literacy-is recognized as a crucial component of health literacy. Yet to date, it is not clear what specific abilities are needed to adequately accomplish this task, thereby hindering both its assessment and the development and evaluation of related interventions. By systematically building on past research, this study aimed to operationally define the concept of health information appraisal competence., Methods: We systematically searched five scholarly databases to identify the conceptualizations and operational definitions of information appraisal in different disciplines. The resulting operationalization was subsequently validated through an online consultation exercise among 85 Swiss stakeholders., Results: Ninety-four publications were included in the review to the point of saturation. We extracted 646 skills, attitudes, and knowledge for health information appraisal. We then collated overlapping or duplicate statements, which produced a list of 43 unique statements belonging to six emergent themes or core competences: (1) basic competence, (2) predisposition, (3) identification competence, (4) critical evaluation competence, (5) selection competence, and (6) application competence. The consultation exercise enriched the operationalization of some of the core competences and confirmed the importance of all competences. Most skills, attitudes, and knowledge, however, were assigned low feasibility by the stakeholders., Conclusions: This study was the first attempt to systematically operationalize health information appraisal competence. From a theoretical perspective, it sheds light on an understudied, health literacy domain, thus contributing to clarity around the concept. From a practical perspective, it provides a strong theoretical basis for the development of a tool to measure health information appraisal competence. This could be used routinely as a screening tool, as an outcome measure for public health interventions, or to identify citizens who are most at risk. Furthermore, it will provide support for the development of future interventions to build health information appraisal competence in the population., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.