Dataset on the nurses’ knowledge, attitude and practice towards palliative care

When a patient enters the end stage of life threatening disease like cancer, treatment of pain and other symptoms must be considered to preserve quality of life (Gielen et al., 2011) [1]. Nurses have an important role in the care of patients who suffered from life threatening diseases. End of life cares is one of the routine activities of nurses (Gott et al., 2012) [2]. We surveyed knowledge, attitude and practice of nurses who worked in the hospitals of Neyshabur University of Medical Sciences towards palliative care from January 2016 to May 2016. A self-administered Persian questionnaire was used for data collection. The attitude scale was adopted from Frommelt Attitude toward Care of the Dying (Frommelt, 1991) and the knowledge questions were adopted from the Palliative Care Quiz for Nursing (Ross et al., 1996). The practice questions were also adopted from different related studies. Data analysis was performed by SPSS Statistics software for windows version 16. Our study showed that majority of nurses had favorable attitude but poor knowledge and practice towards palliative care. The results emphasize the importance and need for developing palliative care services in our hospitals.

The results emphasize the importance and need for developing palliative care services in our hospitals.
& 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Subject area
Nursing and Health Professions, clinical research More specific subject area Knowledge, attitude and practice of nurses towards palliative care Type of data Nurses have a prominent role in end of life care. Palliative care needs to become a part of nursing and medical school curricula as well as continuing nursing and medical education program offerings.

Data
Socio-demographic characteristics of nurses were summarized in Table 1. The total number of nurses was 117 and the response rate was 116. Mean age of the nurses was 32.37 7 8.47 years (range from 22 to 50). The mean 7SD (standard deviation) of knowledge score of nurses in this study were 7.15 7 2.91 (range 3-13). As shown in the Table 2, from the total respondents, 22 nurses (19.3%), 64 nurses (56.1%) and 28 nurses (24.6%) had good knowledge, moderate knowledge and poor knowledge towards palliative care, respectively. Attitude of nurses towards palliative care was measured by Frommelt Attitude toward Care of the Dying scale. The total attitude score of nurses in this study was 74.98 7 8.18 (range 53-110). From the total respondents, 99 nurses (85.3%) and 17 nurses (14.7%) had favorable attitude and unfavorable attitude toward palliative care, respectively (see Table 3). The total practice score of nurses in this study was 17.22 7 8.19 (range 3-34). Also the results showed only 7 (6.3%) of the respondents had good practice towards palliative care (see Table 4). Association between socio-demographic variables such as age, gender, level of education and work experience and nurse's knowledge, attitude and practices towards palliative care was analyzed by Chi square test, Fisher exact test and univariate & multivariate analysis. We found that ward and level of education had a significant association with practice of nurses toward palliative care. The nurses who working in intensive care units had better practice toward palliative care. The nurses who had master degree had better practice toward palliative care. Level of education also had a significant association with attitude of nurses toward palliative care (see Table 5). The result of this study suggested that majority of nurses had favorable attitude but poor knowledge and practice towards palliative care. These results emphasize the importance and need for developing palliative care services in our hospitals. Nurses have a prominent role in patient's end of life care. Palliative care needs to become a part of nursing and medical school curricula as well as continuing nursing and medical education program offerings.

Experimental design, materials and methods
A cross-sectional study was conducted with nurses at 2 Hospitals related to Neyshabur University of Medical Sciences in Neyshabur city, northeastern Iran, from January 2016 to May 2016. The nurses who working in outpatient departments and clinical wards of the hospitals were recruited to participate in the study with at least 1 year job experience. However, nurses working in the central     sterilization supply department, operating room and delivery rooms were excluded. The sample size according to the similar study [5] was determined 116 nurses. Samples were selected as classified random sampling. A self-administered Persian questionnaire was used for data collection. The attitude scale was adopted from Frommelt Attitude toward Care of the Dying scale [3] which was consist of 24 items. The tool has a 5 point Likert scale. This was used to represent people's attitudes to a topic scored on 5 point scale, i.e. 1 (Strongly Disagree), 2 (Disagree), 3 (Uncertain), 4 (Agree) 5 (Strongly Agree). Twelve of the questions were worded positively and twelve were worded negatively. The score of negative questions was reversed. The attitude was favorable if participants gained the score at least 50% of the total attitude score. The knowledge questions were adopted from the palliative care quiz for nursing using questions with Yes (Score 1), No, and Don't know (Score 0) answers [4]. The knowledge was good if participants get the score at least 75% of total knowledge score. The knowledge score between 75% and 25% was defined as moderate knowledge and less than 25% as poor knowledge. The practice questions were also adopted from different related studies which was includes 11 practical questions. The practice was good if participants gained the score more than 75% of total practice score. Data collection was done by two Educational Supervisor nurses in the two hospitals. Data analysis was performed by SPSS Statistics software for Windows version 16 (IBMCorp., Armonk, NY). The study was approved by Ethics Committee of the Neyshabur University of Medical sciences (ethical approval number: IR.NUMS.REC.1394.11). Verbal consent was obtained from each participants, and participant's anonymity and confidentiality was kept. The respondents had the right to withdraw from the study, at any stage.