STUDENT: Kaléi Kowalchik
PROJECT ADVISOR: Michael Evans
ABSTRACT:
Palliative care utilizes a collaborative team approach to minimize symptoms and to prevent suffering of chronic and progressive diseases while also maximizing quality of life. This care is utilized to help patients and their families reach their full physical, emotional, and spiritual potential throughout the disease process; however, misconceptions still exist about palliative care. Therefore, this study examined the impact of an investigator developed educational intervention on community members’ knowledge and attitudes regarding palliative care. A prospective cross-sectional survey design was used to determine if exposure to an educational intervention would be associated with changes in attitudes and knowledge regarding palliative care. Convenience sampling was used to recruit participants for the study from the local community. Using this design, participants were asked to complete the Palliative Care Knowledge Survey (PaCKS) before and after the teaching intervention. Preliminary results show that the educational intervention increased the number of correct responses on the PaCKS. Results also show that the change in PaCKS score is negatively correlated with palliative care knowledge (r = -0.317, p<0.01) but not hospice care knowledge. Results from exposure to the educational intervention suggest an increase in community members’ knowledge of palliative care, which could aid in future healthcare planning and decisions. Participants with prior exposure to hospice care did not score higher on the PaCKS survey; this suggests that prior experience with hospice care does not correlate with palliative care knowledge furthering the need to differentiate the concepts of palliative care and hospice care.
Kalei,
It is quite impressive that you designed and intervention, recruited a number of participants and rigorously collected data. Kudos! Your poster is visually appealing and well-appointed. Information is clear and concisely presented. I like that you took the tip on using the new poster design, too. I want to give you some constructive feedback, in case you do (and you should) present this elsewhere:
1. Be sure to include citations and references for other works.
2. I found there to be a disconnect between the purpose (to examine effects of the program) and the findings that were presented (correlations among study variables). Based on the stated purpose, I expected to see the results of t-tests or anovas demonstrating differences in attitudes and knowledge from pre- to post-test, so the results that were described were unexpected. I wasn’t sure what it meant that “educational intervention was significantly different from other variables.”
3. It would be good to explicitly mention some of the study’s limitations (e.g., convenience sample, consisting of many college students(?), women, and individuals with medical backgrounds).
Again, this is impressive work, so please view my feedback as things to grow on. I’m glad to chat if I can provide some clarification or additional feedback.
Dr. Petren (rpetren@psu.edu).