General Practitioners' Attitudes towards Essential Competencies in End-of-Life Care: A Cross-Sectional Survey.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Identifying essential competencies in end-of-life care, as well as general practitioners' (GPs) confidence in these competencies, is essential to guide training and quality improvement efforts in this domain.

Aim

To determine which competencies in end-of-life care are considered important by GPs, to assess GPs' confidence in these competencies in a European context and their reasons to refer terminally ill patients to a specialist.

Design and setting

Cross-sectional postal survey involving a stratified random sample of 2000 GPs in Switzerland in 2014.

Method

Survey development was informed by a previous qualitative exploration of relevant end-of-life GP competencies. Main outcome measures were GPs' assessment of the importance of and confidence in 18

SUBMITTER: Giezendanner S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5287469 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature