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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Oncology palliative care (PC) services seek to improve quality of life in patients with cancer. PC providers face significant systemic obstacles, stemming from insufficient collaboration between healthcare providers. This study explores these obstacles and strategies to help facilitate successful collaboration amongst healthcare providers at a systemic level.Methods: A multicenter qualitative study was conducted via interviews and focus groups. Fifty employees in Italian-speaking Switzerland were interviewed, along with ten relatives of oncology patients. Framework analysis was used to identify and categorize the most prominent themes.Results: Three main themes were identified: knowledge of and connection to other healthcare approaches; beliefs, attitudes and behavior regarding collaboration; and values, attitudes and beliefs towards life, end-of-life and optimal care approaches for oncology patients.Conclusions: Strategies that promote interprofessional collaboration and oncology PC services should foster a cultural shift towards perceiving these services as a medical specialty, thereby contributing to quality patient care.Implications: An overview of potential limitations is provided, in addition to a timeline of interprofessional collaboration which would help to optimize oncology PC services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Palliative care services hold a great potential to improve the quality of life of patients suffering from chronic degenerative diseases and their families. Their utilization, however, is not yet optimal, even in high-resource countries, and not all those who might benefit from palliative care have access to its services. The international literature suggests that among the possible reasons for the underutilization are problems at the level of communication, both among healthcare professionals and the public. This study, focusing on cancer, aims to explore this aspect further and identify possible communication-related barriers and facilitators to the use of palliative care services in Italian-speaking Switzerland. A mixed-methods approach was chosen. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected between 2017 and 2020 through in-depth interviews with healthcare professionals (in oncology, palliative care, and primary care), key informants, patients, and their families (N = 50), and through a representative population survey (N = 313). Our Findings: allowed us to isolate the lack of knowledge about palliative care, its tools, and its benefits as one of the main obstacles to realizing its full potential. Among health professionals, this consists of a lack of mutual knowledge about the work of the different actors, which hurts the quality of collaboration. On the other hand, misconceptions and false beliefs about palliative care in the population are associated with negative attitudes towards palliative care and a reluctance to address the issue with formal and informal caregivers. In an effort to foster the utilization of palliative care services, targeted educational communication interventions are needed both to promote the interprofessional and inter-disciplinary collaboration between the different health professionals involved in palliative care and to increase awareness and knowledge of palliative care services in the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]