Opinions toward pain management and palliative care: comparison between HIV specialists and oncologists.
Despite the introduction of HAART, pain is still a common symptom in people living with HIV/AIDS. For these persons, pain management supplied by palliative care teams may support standard HIV care. This study compares opinions toward palliative care of 83 HIV specialists and 217 oncologists (French national survey: Palliative Care 2002). Data were collected by phone questionnaire. A cluster analysis was carried out in order to identify contrasted profiles of opinions toward palliative care. A logistic regression was performed to test the relationships between identified clusters and physicians' characteristics. With a two-cluster partition, we observed a profile corresponding to a restrictive conception of palliative care. Within this profile, physicians were more prone to consider that palliative care should be used only for terminally-ill patients, and only after all curative treatments have failed, with a restrained prescriptive power for physicians providing palliative care. This conception was associated with reluctance toward morphine analgesia. Once controlled for other physicians' characteristics, HIV specialists were more likely than oncologists to endorse this restrictive conception (OR=1.9, CI 95% [1.1; 3.3]). Thus French HIV specialists should be more informed about the utility of providing palliative care, even for patients who are not in terminal stage.
Peretti-Watel
P
P
Regional Centre for Disease Control of South-Eastern France, and Health and Medical Research National Institute, Research Unit 379, Social Sciences Applied to Medical Innovation, Institut Paoli Calmettes, Marseilles, France. peretti@marseille.inserm.fr
Bendiane
M K
MK
Galinier
A
A
Lapiana
J M
JM
Favre
R
R
Pegliasco
H
H
Obadia
Y
Y
D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000503:physiopathology; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008495:Medical Oncology; D008875:Middle Aged; D059408:Pain Management; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000379:methods; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014686:Venereology