The purposes of this study were to identify the nurses’ roles as perceived and
performed within the hospice palliative care multidisciplinary team and the roles
that are expected by the multidisciplinary team members. It is important to
understand the role of nurses around the rapidly changing hospice palliative care
service in Korea. Also, understanding nurses’ key roles within the multidisciplinary
team will improve the quality of hospice palliative care.
The method for this study was addressed using a descriptive study. The
participants in this study were nurses and multidisciplinary team members who had
worked for more than six months in hospice palliative care institutions. The
questionnaire was reorganized by researchers to address the nurses’ role in
hospice palliative care. It consisted of 49 questions in seven areas. After IRB
approval, data were collected from September 1, to October 31, 2018. A total of
134 questionnaires were analyzed using descriptive statistic, Independent t-test,
ANOVA, and Scheffé test with the SPSS 23.0 program.
Results show following,
1. For role perception of hospice palliative care nurses, the overall average for
nursing was 4.46±0.38 (out of 5), followed by educator, advocacy, coordinator,
expert practitioner, counselor, researcher and quality manager. The overall level
of nurses’ role performance was 3.60 ± 0.60 (out of 5), followed by the roles of
educator, advocacy, expert practitioner, coordinator, counselor, quality manager
and researcher. The expected role of nurses within a multi-disciplinary team had
a total average of 4.09 ± 0.40 (out of 5), followed by advocacy, educator, quality
manager, researcher, coordinator, expert practitioner, and counselor.
2. For differences in the perception and performance of the nurses’ role, the role
perception was higher than performance in all seven areas and the overall average
of 0.86 points was higher (t=14.986, p<.001). Among the differences in the
perception and performance of nurses’ role, researcher was the most different
(t=13.743, p<.001), followed by counselor (t=12.243, p<.001), advocacy (t=12.325,
p<.001), quality manager (t=10.051, p<.001), expert practitioner (t=13.368, p<.001),
and educator (t=11.139, p<.001).
3. For the difference in expected roles in hospice palliative care between nurses
and multidisciplinary team members, the expected roles of the multidisciplinary
team members were on average 0.37 points lower than nurses (t=5.207, p<.001).
The biggest difference in role perception was expert practitioner (t=6.683, p<.001),
followed by counselor (t=4.397, p<.001), educator (t=5.339, p<.001), coordinator
(t=3.950, p<.001), and advocacy (t=2.838, p=.005).
In conclusion, in order to reduce the difference between the perception and
performance of the nurses’ role, it is important to provide continuous education
courses on the roles of nurses, and analyze the changing roles of nurses within the
current hospice palliative care situation, create job descriptions, and redistribute
roles that are difficult to perform. In addition, to reducing differences in the role
perception of nurses within multidisciplinary team members, it is necessary to
create opportunities to understand each other's roles through regular
multidisciplinary team meetings and interpersonal practical training that allows the
team to experience each other’s work and share information with each other.