Depression in palliative care settings: The need for training for nurses and other health professionals to improve patients' pathways to care

Depression is highly prevalent in patients receiving palliative care; however, detection rates are low, with many patients who suffer with depression continuing to go undetected and untreated. A number of factors unique to this setting, as well as issues relating to staff knowledge and self-efficacy...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nurse education today 2012-07, Vol.32 (5), p.556-560
Main Authors: Hallford, David J., McCabe, Marita P., Mellor, David, Davison, Tanya E., Goldhammer, Denisa L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Depression
Depression (Psychology)
Depression - diagnosis
Depression - nursing
Detection
Health Services Needs and Demand
Humans
Medical Evaluation
Medical Staff - education
Mental depression
Nurses
Nursing
Nursing Assessment
Nursing care
Nursing Care - standards
Nursing Education
Nursing Evaluation Research
Nursing Staff - education
Palliative care
Palliative Care - psychology
Palliative Care - standards
Patient care
Patients
Professional training
Quality of Health Care
Self Efficacy
Teaching Methods
Thinking Skills
Training
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Depression is highly prevalent in patients receiving palliative care; however, detection rates are low, with many patients who suffer with depression continuing to go undetected and untreated. A number of factors unique to this setting, as well as issues relating to staff knowledge and self-efficacy working with depression, may impede the detection of patients who are depressed by professional health care staff. Although programmes aimed to train nurses and other allied health staff in depression may be an effective way to improve detection rates, there have been few studies investigating the efficacy of these interventions. This article draws upon recent literature to provide a narrative review of barriers to detection and factors relating to professional palliative care staffs' ability to provide pathways to care for patients who suffer with depression in this setting. Previously evaluated training programmes are reviewed and the argument is made that further development and empirical evaluation of depression training interventions for staff in this setting will provide services with evidence-based methods of training nurses and other professional care staff and improve the pathways to care for patients who suffer with depression.
ISSN:0260-6917
1532-2793
DOI:10.1016/j.nedt.2011.07.011