Evaluation of the opinions of relatives of patients receiving palliative care.

BACKGROUND

Palliative care is a care service that positively supports the quality of life of patients with a life-threatening disease and their relatives. Lack of knowledge and the associated negative perception of individuals in this respect may be an obstacle for patients and their relatives to request and receive this service.

AIM: This study aims to determine the knowledge and opinions about palliative care of patients' relatives who apply to palliative care centers and request palliative care services.

METHOD: This study, which has a quantitative, cross-sectional, descriptive and relational design, uses a questionnaire aimed at determining the demographic and experiential characteristics of the participants and a form containing statements to determine the knowledge and opinions of the participants regarding palliative care to collect data.

FINDINGS: The study revealed that most of the participants who applied for palliative care services had never received information about palliative care (56.3%) and most of them (78.5%) did not know or knew very little about this issue.

CONCLUSION

It is recommended that comprehensive programmes should be planned and disseminated to raise awareness of not only the patients or their relatives, but also society as a whole in order to eliminate the lack of information and negative perception about end-of-life care, which is an important barrier to access to palliative care.