Abstract
Background:
The field of palliative care (PC) is growing as the world population ages and burden of chronic diseases increases. Thus, it is important that the general public is knowledgeable about PC and the benefits PC provides.
Objective:
The aim of this study is to describe the public’s knowledge, awareness, and perceptions of PC and determine whether these have changed over time.
Methods:
A scoping literature review was conducted from 1968 to May 2019 using PubMed, EMBASE, and MEDLINE databases.
Results:
Thirteen studies met inclusion criteria that originated from the United States, Canada, Scotland, Italy, New Zealand, Ireland, United Kingdom, Korea, and Sweden between years 2003 and 2019. Participants were adults and mostly younger than 64 years, women, and Caucasian. The majority of studies reported the public having poor knowledge (7/9 articles) and awareness (4/6 articles) of PC over the past 16 years. Top characteristics associated with increased levels of knowledge and/or awareness of PC included women (6/8 articles), age 40+ (6/8 articles), experience with a close friend and/or relative requiring PC (4/8 articles), and working in health-care and/or PC (4/8 articles). The most common perceptions of PC were associated with patients who have terminal illnesses and end-of-life care. Participants commonly received information about PC from the media, having a close friend or relative requiring PC, and working in a health-care setting.
Conclusions:
The public has poor knowledge and awareness about PC and several misperceptions exist. These findings have remained constant over time despite growth in the field of PC, which highlights the strong need for focused educational interventions.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
