Palliative Care Practices and Self-Efficacy of Students Taking Online Palliative Care Course: Quasi-Experimental Study

Background: It is important for nursing students to have sufficient knowledge, skills, practice ability, and self-efficacy to provide palliative care.

Aim: This study was conducted to examine the palliative care practices and self-efficacy status of students taking online palliative care course.

Methods: This study is a single-group, pre-test-post-test, and quasi-experimental study. The sample of the study consisted of 46 nursing students who continued their education at a university in the spring semester of the 2020–2021 academic year and volunteered to par-ticipate in the study. Data were collected using the “Student Introduction Form,” "Palliative Care Self-Reported Practices Scale (PCPS)", and General Self-Efficacy Scale.” To conduct the research, ethical permission, application permission from the relevant institution where the study was carried out, usage permission from the scale owners, and consent from the students were obtained. The number and percentage distributions, means, standard deviation, Wilcoxon signed-ranks test, and paired sample t-test were used to analyze the data.

Results: Of the students, 71.7% are 4th-year students and 58.7% are women. In addition, 78.3% of the participants stated that they chose the nursing profession voluntarily and 80.7% of them stated that they had heard the term “palliative care” before. While the total mean score of the General Self-Efficacy Scale of the students was 63.41 ± 11.85 before the education, it was determined as 68.60 ± 10.09 after the education. While the pre-test total score average of the PCPS was 69.43 ± 3.44, the post-test mean score was 81.19 ± 6.79. While there was no relationship (r = .223, P > 0.05) between the PCPS and the General Self-Efficacy Scale before the palliative care education, a strong positive correlation (r = .402, P < 0.05) was found after the palliative care education.

Conclusion: As a result of the study, it was found that the online palliative care course contributed to the development of students’ self-efficacy. It is recommended that the palliative care course be added to the nursing education curriculum as an elective or compulsory course.