ArticleBMC palliative care2017
Critical attitudes and beliefs towards guidelines amongst palliative care professionals - results from a national survey.
Article in BMC palliative care, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Assessing palliative care practices in intensive care units and interpreting them using the lens of appropriate care concepts. An umbrella review.Intensive care medicine · 2024Pooled it
- Perceptions and Use of Clinical Practice Guidelines in Psychosocial Oncology-A Pan-Canadian Survey of Mental Health and Social Service Professionals.Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) · 2026Article
- A Program to Improve General Palliative Cancer Care Guideline Implementation: Development, Acceptability, and Feasibility of Implementation Strategies.Journal of evaluation in clinical practice · 2025Article
- The implementation of guidelines in palliative care - a scoping review.BMC palliative care · 2025Article
- Article
- Unlocking timely palliative care: assessing referral practices and barriers at a ghanaian teaching hospital.BMC palliative care · 2024Article
- Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Palliative Care in German Comprehensive Cancer Centers - an evaluation of the implementation status.BMC palliative care · 2020Article
- The ethical climate in paediatric oncology-A national cross-sectional survey of health-care personnel.Psycho-oncology · 2019Article
- Barriers for the implementation of guidelines in palliative care-results from a national survey of professionals.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundLittle is known about palliative care professionals' attitudes towards guidelines. In 2015, the German Association for Palliative Medicine (DGP) published an evidence based guideline for palliative care in adults with incurable cancer. Before publication we conducted a national survey among members of the DGP to detect possible barriers and facilitators for its implementation. The aim of the present publication was to evaluate critical attitudes and beliefs which could hinder the effective implementation of the new guideline and to evaluate differences within professional groups and medical specialisations.
methodsThis web-based online survey was addressed to all members of the DGP in summer 2014. Twenty-one questions concerning attitudes and beliefs towards guidelines were a priori developed to represent the following topics: scepticism regarding the quality of guidelines, doubts about the implementation of guidelines, restrictions in treatment options through guidelines, discrepancy between palliative care values and guidelines. Differences within professions and specialisations were tested using Kruskal-Wallis tests.
resultsAll 4.786 members with known email address were invited, 1.181 followed the link, 1.138 began to answer the questionnaire and 1.031 completed the questionnaire. More than half of participating members were physicians and one third nurses. Scepticism regarding the quality of existing guidelines was high (range 12.8-73.2%). Doubts regarding practical aspects of guidelines were less prevalent but still high (range 21.8-57.6%). About one third (range 5.4-31.4%) think that guidelines restrict their treatment options. In addition, 38.8% believed that guidelines are a kind of cookbook and restrict the flexibility of individual patient care. The majority saw no or little discrepancy between palliative care values and guidelines (range 68.4-82.6%). There were relatively small but significant differences between professions and specialisations.
conclusionThe person-centred and individual approach of palliative care does not seem to contradict the acceptance of guidelines. Main barriers were related to scepticism regarding the quality of guidelines and the implementation of guidelines in general.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.