Relationship Between Quality of Palliative Care for Children with Malignancies and Mothers’ Level of Education

Abstract

Objective(s): To (1) find out the association between palliative care for children with malignancies and mothers’ level of education, and (2) investigate the differences in the quality of palliative care among mothers’ level of education groups.

Methodology: descriptive predictive correlational design is carried out to find The Difference Between palliative care for Children with Malignancies and mothers’ level of education. This study was conducted in each of Pediatric Welfare Teaching Hospital – Medical City Complex and Child’s Central Teaching Hospital – Al-Karkh Health Directorate, Baghdad City. Data were collected through structured interview with the study participants for the period from December 2^nd, 2022 to January 31^st, 2023.  A non-probability (convenience) used to select sample of 165 mothers of children with malignancies.

Results: The study results display that the palliative care is good from the perspectives of most of mothers (n = 114; 76.0%), followed by those who perceive it as fair (n = 31; 20.7%), and those who perceive it as poor (n = 5; 3.3%).The study results reveal that there is a statistically significant difference in the Psychosocial and spiritual dimensions among mothers’ level of education groups (p-value = .016).

Conclusion: Mothers who hold a bachelor’s degree perceive the psychosocial and spiritual dimensions as the lowest compared to mothers of other levels of education.

Recommendations: There is a need for the pediatric nurses to devote special attention to mothers of children with malignancies whose level of education is low with the goal of raise their awareness of the palliative care their children are receiving.