How much is known about palliative care in lay public? A case study from Slovenia

Abstract

Background Around 22,000 people die in Slovenia every year, therefore, knowledge of palliative care options is important. The lay public the lay public must know as much as possible about the benefits offered by palliative care. The purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes and familiarity of lay public with palliative care and the possibilities of palliative care in the home environment. We were interested in statements of relatives of persons who have been admitted to nursing homes as well. Methods We invited to survey as many adults as possible, whom we approached via social networks. As a special subgroup of respondents, we included relatives of those who were residents of nursing homes. The survey took place in 2021. We considered only those survey questionnaires that were completely filled out. We used statistical analytical package IBM SPSS program, version 25.0. First, we checked the normality of the data distribution. We used the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests. The non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine differences. The level of statistical significance considered was 0.05. Results The majority of all respondents were not familiar with the possibility of palliative care at home. In terms of the purpose of palliative care, the respondents ranked first that it is intended for the entire family, second for patients with chronic diseases, and third for patients with cancer. Lay women with higher education were more familiar with the purpose of palliative care. Older respondents were not better informed about the possibility of palliative care in the home environment compared to other respondents. Relatives of people who are housed in a nursing home are not better acquainted with palliative care compared to the rest of the respondents. Conclusions Lay people, including relatives of residents of nursing homes, do not know about the possibilities of palliative care at home. Even the elderly, who should be key decision-makers regarding the organization of palliative care, are not familiar with it. We believe that it is necessary to set up a national e-portal to inform the public about the possibilities of palliative care at home.