Knowledge and home caregivers experiences from palliative health care team education in pain management of cancer patients in Rwanda

Abstract

Chronic and acute pain is highly prevalent in the general patient population, and those suffering from chronic illness are at increased risk of untreated pain including cancer patients. Terminally ill cancer patients can be managed well at home or in healthcare institutions such as a hospital. Pain management must involve a multidisciplinary team. Home-based caregivers need to have educational support including pain management skills including different techniques for pain relieve and the skills of pain assessment and treatment modalities. Aim: The study is aimed is to assess the knowledge and perceived experience of home caregivers of cancer patients related to pain management in a home-based care environment in the context received from health care team. Methodology This is a quantitative research uses a non-experimental descriptive crosssectional design. A purposive sampling strategy was used to identify participants for 120 inhome caregivers for patients cancer followed in palliative care service at Kibogora Catchment area. The instrument used was the adopted questionnaire and was pilot tested for reliability and validity and the questionnaire used was adapted to the context of Rwanda. Results: in the results of this study shows that the caregivers were educated on chronic cancer pain and had same information relating to pain management however those information are not really applied in their daily care life for patient and the do not have efficient knowledge on pain assessment and tools to assessment pain which can have a negative impact on success to pain reliever ,most caregivers are family relatives to patients who are caring patient for considerable time but through the support from palliative health care team they arrived to cope with the situation and they are not affected. Conclusion: The present study shows that there was a significant association between palliative health care team education to the knowledge and appreciation of caregivers in case of chronic cancer pain management at home based care service in Rwanda however the still a need to improve the service and empower those caregivers in terms of skills for pain assessment and the tools to use with a continuous follow up and monitoring of home care services as well as caregiver‘s needs has to be considered in every care component in health care system in Key Words: Knowledge, palliative health care team, home caregivers, pain, cancer