Critical Care Nurses Knowledge, Practice, Facilitators, and Barriers of Palliative Care: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Abstract Background Optimizing the quality of care among palliative patient cases is a prominent role of nurses since they are the largest group of health care professionals. This review highlights the available evidence on the knowledge, facilitators, barriers, and practice level of palliative care among critical care nurses. Materials and Methods PubMed (MEDLINE), Cochrane library, Google scholar, and Cumulative Index for Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) were used to search the literature for studies published between 2017 and 2022. Result Eighteen articles were included in this review, which verifies that most nurses have poor knowledge regarding palliative care principles and, consequently, poor practices. However, many barriers and facilitators that affect the provision of palliative care were reached. Barriers include inadequate clinical training, time shortage, and inappropriate unit design. The main facilitators included family awareness of patient status, family and physician cooperation, and continuous education of the staff. Conclusion Nurses are the first-line manager in providing patient care, so it is necessary to work hard to improve their level of knowledge to meet the main palliative care needs. Continuous educational sessions and training about effective palliative care are recommended to enhance the provision of palliative care for nurses to provide the optimum quality of care.