Perceptions of Palliative Care: Demographics and Health Status Among the General Population in Florida and the United States.

Abstract

Background: Palliative care (PC) helps maintain quality of life for seriously ill patients, yet, many Americans lack knowledge of PC.

Aim: To explore the relationships between knowledge of PC of individuals living in north-central Florida and throughout the United States.

Design: This cross-sectional survey with three sampling approaches, one was a community-engaged sample and two were panel respondent samples. Respondents and setting: Respondents of the Florida sample (n₁ = 329) and the community-engaged sample (n₂ = 100), were representative of the 23 Florida county general population. Respondents of the national sample (n = 1800) were adult members of a panel owned by a cloud-based survey platform.

Results: Young adults compared with adults (OR 1.62, 95% CI 1.14-2.28, P .007), middle-adults (OR 2.47, 95% CI 1.58-3.92, P < .001) and older-adults (OR 3.75, 95% CI 2.50-5.67, P < .001) were less likely to agree that the goal of PC is to help friends and family cope with a patient's illness, and that the goal of PC is to manage pain and other physical symptoms compared with adults (OR 1.67, 95% CI 1.20-2.30, P .002) middle-adults (OR 2.58, 95% CI 1.71-3.95, P < .001) and older-adults (OR 7.19, 95% CI 4.68-11.2, P < .001). Participants with greater rural identity (OR 1.39, 95% CI 1.31-1.48, P < .001) were more likely to agree that accepting PC means giving up.

Conclusions: Increased knowledge of PC might be influenced through targeting educational interventions and educating the general population through social media use.