Assessment of Barriers and Facilitations of palliative care in children with cancer from Nurses and Physicians, perspective in Oncology Wards of pediatric hospitals in Tehran in 2020

One of the most important concerns related to children with cancer is to pay special attention to increasing the quality of life, which is one of the most important ways to improve it, palliative care. The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the barriers to implementing palliative care in pediatric oncology departments from the perspective of nurses and doctors working in pediatric oncology departments.

The population of this descriptive study include; All the nurses and doctors working in the pediatric oncology departments of selected hospitals of medical sciences universities in Tehran, which was carried out by the full enumeration method. The data collection tool was a questionnaire of demographic characteristics and a researcher-made questionnaire of palliative care obstacles. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and one-way ANOVA and t-test.

According to the findings; Lack of a palliative care consultant (38%), lack of a separate department (38%), lack of staff (27%), family's desire for life-sustaining treatments (24%) and parents' discomfort with delaying death (24%) It hinders the implementation of palliative care.

In the present study, organizational and managerial factors as well as factors related to the family's lack of knowledge, which can be solved directly with their training and support from medical staff, as obstacles to the implementation of palliative care in pediatric oncology departments from the perspective of doctors and nurses working in this Sections were identified. Therefore, this seems to require planning at the top management levels.