5^th International Conference on
Palliative Care and Gerontology

Biography:

Jacqueline Yammine, MN, RN, is the Senior Manager for the Case Management Department and the Program Manager for Patient and Family Education (PFE) Program at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi (CCAD) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). She has developed a comprehensive post discharge phone call program as part of a new service line in CCAD in collaboration with the PFE, Case Management, Clinical Nurse Coordinators, and the Nurse Triage teams.

Mrs. Yammine was the first case manager joining pre-operational CCAD in August 2014. Between 2005 and 2014, Mrs. Yammine was a Case Manager in a governmental community health services center in the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Between the years 2000-2004, she worked in UAE in Jazzirah and Mafraq Hospital.

Mrs. Yammine is a candidate for the Doctor of Nursing Practice at Case Western Reserve University with an expected graduation date of December 2019. She earned her BSN in 2000 from the American University of Beirut (Beirut, Lebanon) and a MN in 2012 from Athabasca University (Alberta, Canada).

 

Abstract:

Worldwide, the need for palliative care is rapidly increasing due to an ageing population and increases in life limiting diseases. Palliative care is underdeveloped in most of the world, especially in developing countries in the Middle East and Asia. Although United Arab Emirates (UAE) is an oil-rich country that has the economic potential to provide the state of the art health care to its population, it has underdeveloped palliative care due to minimal provision and integration within the health care system. It is in its infantile phase, hampered by out-of-date laws on resuscitation, misplaced fears over opiate addiction, inadequate palliative care education and training to the medical professionals, lack of supporting policies, unstandardized care practices, and other factors.

Nurses play an integral part in the delivery of palliative care to their patients and families. There are multiple factors influencing the effectiveness of the nurse’s role in the successful delivery of palliative care. Given the context of the cultural background of both the international population of nurses working in the UAE; it is crucial to assess the factors associated with the delivery of palliative care in the population of nurses working in CCAD. Understanding the factors will facilitate planning for appropriate training programs and system changes in palliative care delivery.

Purpose: To perform a pre-implementation data collection to understand nursing knowledge, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behaviors to help inform a successful implementation plan of palliative care services in a tertiary care hospital in the UAE.

Method: An online questionnaire which captured the nurses’ demographic information, knowledge of palliative care through the Palliative Care Quiz for Nurses (PCQN) survey, the nurses’ attitudes toward caring for terminally ill individuals using the Frommelt Attitude toward Care of the Dying (FATCOD) tool, and other questions to capture the beliefs and behaviours towards palliative care was completed by 214 multinational nurses working in a tertiary care hospital in the UAE.

Results: The vast majority of the studied sample had poor knowledge of palliative care, with the highest PCQN scores for nurses from South East Asia (58.36/100) All nurses (n=214) regardless of the continent of origin had a favourable attitude towards palliative care. Multiple regression tests to follow.