Impact of Standardized Educational Intervention on Improvement in Analgesic Knowledge and Its Compliance among Patients of Advanced Cancer Patients Attending Palliative Clinic: Prospective Randomized Study

Abstract

Patient education is a low-cost intervention that can help in improving the knowledge and compliance regarding analgesics. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of the standardized educational intervention on knowledge regarding analgesic, its compliance, and barriers to compliance among advanced cancer patients attending palliative care clinic.

In this randomized control trial, 100 advanced cancer patients with pain were randomly allocated to two groups. A standardized educational intervention of 10-15 minutes on cancer pain management and analgesics was delivered at clinic visit to the patients in the intervention group at baseline and the control group received usual care. Analgesic knowledge, analgesic compliance, and barriers to compliance were measured for each patient at baseline, 2 and 4 weeks follow up visit. The data was analyzed and p < 0.05 was considered significant.

Analgesic knowledge (p = 0.001) and compliance (p = 0.001) improved significantly in the experimental group at 2 weeks and 4 weeks as compared to the control group. There was also a statistically significant decrease in barriers to compliance in the experimental group as compared to the control group. A significant correlation between the knowledge and compliance score at 4 weeks in the experimental group was found with a Karl Pearson correlation coefficient, r = 0.628 (p = 0.001).

The standardized educational intervention was found to be effective in improving the analgesic knowledge and analgesic compliance among cancer patients with pain at 2 and 4 weeks follow up as compared to the usual care.

Keywords:

• analgesics
• cancer pain
• compliance
• knowledge
• standardized educational intervention

Declaration of interest

All authors disclose no conflict of interest regarding this manuscript content.