According to a study carried out in Germany, many patients at the end of their life do not die with dignity. This is what doctors and nurses from cancer centers have told us.
Many patients hospitalized in cancer centers do not die with dignity. This is what emerges from a new study which interviewed doctors and nurses working in cancer centers in Germany. Unpublished results published in the scientific journal Cancer, one of the publications of the American Cancer Society.
Lack of time, rooms that leave something to be desired …
To reach this conclusion, Karin Jors, researcher at the University Center of Medicine in Freiburg (Germany), and her colleagues set out to determine whether the circumstances of death in these hospitals were carried out with dignity. To do this, they surveyed doctors and nurses from 16 hospitals belonging to 10 cancer centers in the Länder of Baden-Württemberg.
The survey focused on criteria such as the quality of end-of-life care, patient reception facilities (rooms), medical training for caregivers, and communication with the medical team.
As a result, among 1,131 respondents, only 57% believed that patients can die with dignity within their unit.
In addition, half of the staff surveyed indicated that they rarely have enough time to care for dying patients. And 55% of them found that the rooms available for patients at the end of their life were not satisfactory.
More optimistic doctors
In terms of training, here again the shoe pinch, because only 19% of respondents felt that they had been well trained to take care of the care of dying patients. Fortunately, this percentage concerned only 6% of the doctors surveyed. It was physicians who viewed the circumstances of patients’ deaths much more positively than nurses, whether for communication with the sick or for life-prolonging treatments.
Palliative care centers need more resources
“In our aging society, it is predicted that the number of hospital deaths will continue to rise in the years to come, and many of those deaths will be attributable to cancer. For this reason, it is particularly important that cancer centers strive to create a comfortable and dignified environment for dying patients and their families, ”said scientist Karin Jors, lead author of the study. “Above all, staff must have sufficient means to take care of these patients,” she added.
Thus, this team of researchers wants the integration of palliative care into standard cancer care curricula when studying medicine. “These will have to be understood from the moment of diagnosis,” she explains.
In addition, it advocates more generally for the development of standards for end-of-life care. And ask “ the establishment of a comprehensive palliative care program for medical personnel in health establishments ”. Finally, it insists on the need to encourage research in this field.
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