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Observational Study
. 2017 Nov 22;16(1):57.
doi: 10.1186/s12904-017-0244-6.

Self-confidence and knowledge of German ICU physicians in palliative care - a multicentre prospective study

Veronika Krautheim  1 , Andrea Schmitz  2 , Gesine Benze  3 , Thomas Standl  4 , Christine Schiessl  5 , Wolfgang Waldeyer  1 , Alexander Hapfelmeier  6 , Eberhard F Kochs  1 , Gerhard Schneider  1   7 , Klaus J Wagner  1 , Christian M Schulz  8
Affiliations
Observational Study

Self-confidence and knowledge of German ICU physicians in palliative care - a multicentre prospective study

Veronika Krautheim et al. BMC Palliat Care. .

Abstract

Background: Little is known about ICU physicians' self-confidence and knowledge related to palliative care. Our objective was to investigate self-confidence and knowledge of German ICU physicians related to palliative care, and to assess the impact of work experience, gender, specialty and additional certifications in pain or palliative medicine.

Methods: In a multicentre prospective observational study ICU physicians of ten hospitals were asked to rate their self-confidence and to complete a multiple choice questionnaire for the assessment of knowledge. Beyond descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests for group comparisons, linear regression analysis was used to assess the impact of independent variable on self-confidence and knowledge. Spearman's rank test was calculated.

Results: 55% of answers in the knowledge test were correct and more than half of the participants rated themselves as "rather confident" or "confident". Linear regression analysis revealed that an additional certificate in either pain or palliative medicine significantly increased both knowledge and self-confidence, but only 15 out of 137 participants had at least one of those certificates. Relation between self-confidence and the results of the knowledge test was weak (r = 0.270 in female) and very weak (r = -0.007 in male).

Conclusions: Although the questionnaire needs improvement according to the item analysis, it appears that, with respect to palliative care, ICU Physicians' self-confidence is not related to their knowledge. An additional certificate in either pain or palliative medicine was positively correlated to both self-confidence and knowledge. However, only a minority of the participants were qualified through such a certificate.

Keywords: Critical care; Gender; Knowledge; Palliative care; Self-confidence.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the medical faculty of the Technische Universität München (N° 5314/12, March 5th 2012).

The participants and heads of the involved departments provided written informed consent.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Self-confidence related to knowledge, presented for female and male participants separately. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients are provided as r, boxplots represent median, interquartile range and end points
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Self-confidence related to knowledge for participants with more or less than 18 months of ICU experience. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients are provided as r, boxplots represent median, interquartile range and end points
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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