Quality in Primary Care Open Access

Professional quality of life among palliative care teams

7^th Edition of International Conference on Family Medicine & Primary Care

February 22-24, 2018 Paris, France

Tali Samson and Pesach Shvartzman

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Quality in Primary Care

Abstract:

Background: Palliative care providers are exposed to the dying process as part of their job. Dealing with patientâ��s symptoms may have ramifications for palliative teamâ��s professional quality of life (ProQol). Research has focused on unique work-related outcomes such as compassion satisfaction (CS), secondary traumatization (STS) and burnout (BU). Aim: Aim of this study is to compare ProQol among palliative workers who have a high level of exposure to patientâ��s death, with their colleagues who have a low level of exposure. Study Population: Research group: all physicians, nurses and social workers who provide palliative care in hospital and community-based hospices (N=355). Control group: physicians, nurses and social workers who provide primary care services at Clalit Health Services clinics (N=710). Data Collection: 151 questionnaires were returned from the research group (response rate 42%) and 150 from the control group (response rate 21%). Data Analysis: The psychometric characteristics of the Hebrew version of the ProQol questionnaire were assessed using CFA and EFA methods. Differences between the groups in level of exposure to death were assessed by a multivariate analysis of variance (MANCOVA) using the three ProQol components (CS, STS and BU) as the dependent variables. Results: In terms of CS, STS and BU there were no significant differences in frequencies between the groups. In both groups there was a reduced level of secondary traumatization (20.78�±6.03 and 19.3�±5.32 respectively), a moderate level of compassion satisfaction (40.72�±5.28 and 39.89�±5.97 respectively), and an average intensity of burnout (2.62�±0.92 and 2.7�±0.98 respectively). Discussion & Conclusions: Discussion will emphasize the unique contribution of level of engagement to STS among palliative workers and the importance of measuring both positive and negative work-related outcomes in light of the existing knowledge indicating low rates of negative workrelated outcomes among palliative workers.

Biography :

Tali Samson currently works at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Tali does research in Social Theory.