Perception of Healthcare Professionals on Palliative Care in Primary Healthcare: a quasi-experimental study
Published 2025-11-15
Keywords
- Palliative care,
- Primary Health Care,
- Continuing education,
- Public Health
How to Cite
Copyright (c) 2025 Juliana Zidan, Audrei Castro Telles, Bruna Sameneses dos Reis, Adélia Teresa dos Santos Narciso Kiesse, Eunice Sá, Marcelle Miranda da Silva
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Introduction
Primary health care should promote health, prevent disease and manage chronic conditions, including offering palliative care to patients and their families, alleviating suffering and improving quality of life. However, this context faces challenges for palliative care, such as the lack of training for professionals. Thus, continuing health education is a tool that promotes integration between generalist and specialized palliative care, expanding equity and quality of palliative care at this point in the network, including home care.
Objective
To assess health professionals’ perceptions of palliative care in primary health care before and after a training course on the basic principles of this subject.
Methods
This is an uncontrolled quasi-experimental study to evaluate before and after an educational intervention in a single group of participants, following the guidelines of Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) in an adapted form. The interventions took place at INCA, in July/August 2023, with health professionals from the municipality of Duque de Caxias. Simple statistics were performed to evaluate quantitative data from the “Floor Line” Dynamic and qualitative analysis of individual evaluations from Google Forms, with the aid of webQDA® software. Ethical aspects were respected.
Results
The “Line on the floor” dynamic highlighted a difference between before and after the course, with an increase in the number of correct answers to the statements presented in the dynamic. Before, the perception of palliative care was mostly associated with the end of life, with no knowledge of legislation and concepts such as dysthanasia and orthothanasia. However, in both moments, professionals agree that primary health care should offer palliative care, and that the home is an important context for care.
Conclusion
The results show that health professionals need to improve their perception of palliative care, but they understand its importance in primary health care. Challenges need to be overcome to ensure comprehensive palliative care across the care network, and professional training can be an effective response. The course is an important educational tool to equip professionals and promote palliative care across the network, including primary health care.