Hospice Care Providers’ Knowledge, Attitudes And Practices In China: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract Background: In recently years, China has been growing awareness about the hospice service movement although hospice care was Initially introduced 30 years ago. Hospice care providers’ knowledge, attitudes, self-efficiency, and practices status in China should be investigated. This study aims to survey the general actuality of hospice care providers’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices of hospice care (KAPHC) in five cities in China, and explore relevant influencing factors.Method: Relying on our KAPHC scale, we randomly surveyed 3647 valid health care providers in five sampled cities of China in 2019, which respectively represent the north, northeast, east, central, and southwest area. In each city, 14 institutions were selected and 50 health providers were surveyed in each institution. Increment of voluntary participation was accepted. The scaling outcomes were compared among each sampled city-groups with Chi-square test or ANOVA. Multiple correspondence analyses were also performed for further results.Results: Of all, 41.46% providers had real experience in providing hospice care, and 58.68% confirmed willingness of providing. The overall knowledge correct rate was 57.13%. The average scores of threats, benefits, barriers, subjective norms, confidence, and self-report behaviour items were 15.40, 41.56, 16.75, 15.65, 41.56, and 38.61. Providers from eastern China, willing to provide hospice care, or experienced death witness in providing hospice care, proved better score in knowledge, threats, benefits, barriers, subjective norms, confidence, and self-report behaviour (P<0.05).Conclusions: The investigation reflected urgent need for systematic training of professional knowledge and skills on hospice care for health care providers. Governments’ attention and policy measures are crucial as most Chinese hospice care providers practiced as “organization actors”. More attention was need on balanced development of different areas.