{"title":"Religious practices and quality of life in palliative care: insights from Tanzania.","authors":"Sonia Nada Edward Sokoine, Gad Kilonzo, Nadia Ahmed, Kelvin Furanaeli Sawe","doi":"10.1136/spcare-2024-005360","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>To explore the role of religious practices in palliative care and their impact on the quality of life among inpatients at Ocean Road Cancer Institute.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>A quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted, using structured surveys to gather data from 150 inpatients receiving palliative care. The WHO Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) tool was used to measure quality of life, alongside data on the usage of religious practices.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The findings reveal that most of the participants (90%) expressed a need for religious practices, predominantly prayer. Notably, access to these practices positively correlated with improved perceptions of well-being, despite a considerable portion of patients reporting a poor quality of life (84.7%).</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The study's findings highlight the importance of incorporating religious practices into palliative care, particularly in low-resource settings like Tanzania, to provide culturally sensitive, holistic support for patients with cancer.</p>","PeriodicalId":9136,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1136/spcare-2024-005360","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Objective: To explore the role of religious practices in palliative care and their impact on the quality of life among inpatients at Ocean Road Cancer Institute.
Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted, using structured surveys to gather data from 150 inpatients receiving palliative care. The WHO Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) tool was used to measure quality of life, alongside data on the usage of religious practices.
Results: The findings reveal that most of the participants (90%) expressed a need for religious practices, predominantly prayer. Notably, access to these practices positively correlated with improved perceptions of well-being, despite a considerable portion of patients reporting a poor quality of life (84.7%).
Conclusion: The study's findings highlight the importance of incorporating religious practices into palliative care, particularly in low-resource settings like Tanzania, to provide culturally sensitive, holistic support for patients with cancer.
期刊介绍:
Published quarterly in print and continuously online, BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care aims to connect many disciplines and specialties throughout the world by providing high quality, clinically relevant research, reviews, comment, information and news of international importance.
We hold an inclusive view of supportive and palliative care research and we are able to call on expertise to critique the whole range of methodologies within the subject, including those working in transitional research, clinical trials, epidemiology, behavioural sciences, ethics and health service research. Articles with relevance to clinical practice and clinical service development will be considered for publication.
In an international context, many different categories of clinician and healthcare workers do clinical work associated with palliative medicine, specialist or generalist palliative care, supportive care, psychosocial-oncology and end of life care. We wish to engage many specialties, not only those traditionally associated with supportive and palliative care. We hope to extend the readership to doctors, nurses, other healthcare workers and researchers in medical and surgical specialties, including but not limited to cardiology, gastroenterology, geriatrics, neurology, oncology, paediatrics, primary care, psychiatry, psychology, renal medicine, respiratory medicine.