Attendance at end-of-life care seminars and related factors among home visiting nurses

Aims: The aim of this study was to identify the factors associated with the opportunities that home visiting nurses attended seminars about end-of-life care. Method: This was a cross-sectional correlation study. Data were gathered from 343 home visiting nurses working in 62 agencies across Chiba prefecture in eastern Japan. The authors asked participants: (i) questions on socio-demographic data; (ii) questions on opportunities for attending end-of-life care seminars; and (iii) questions on agency characteristics. Opportunities for attending end-of-life care seminars were classified into two categories as either having an opportunity to attend end-of-life care seminars “0 times” or “once or more”. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to identify the relationship between attendance at end-of-life care seminars and related socio-demographic and agency characteristics. Results: Data from 224 home visiting nurses working in 53 agencies were included in the analysis. Overall, 66 nurses (29.5%) had no opportunity to attend end-of-life care seminars. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that autonomy in providing end-of-life care (OR=2.82, 95% CI: 1.07–7.40) was associated with attendance at end-of-life care seminars. Conclusion: Nursing managers should provide autonomy to staff in order to ensure quality of end-of-life care among nursing staff.