Core competency in palliative care among intensive care unit nurses: A latent profile analysis

Intensive care unit (ICU) nurses play a leading role in integrating palliative care into ICU practices, which requires them to possess professional and comprehensive palliative care core competencies.

To explore the current status of ICU nurses' palliative care core competency and to examine the factors influencing different subgroups of core competency.

A quantitative, cross-sectional study. A random sampling of 342 ICU nurses from five hospitals participated in this study from March to April 2024. A latent profile analysis (LPA) was conducted to identify subgroups based on the Palliative Care Nurses' Core Competences (PCNCC) scale. Differences between the variables, including sociodemographic characteristics, autonomous learning capacity, job satisfaction and subgroups, were explored using multivariate logistic regression. This cross-sectional study used the STROBE checklist.

The mean score for palliative care core competency among ICU nurses was (58.96 ± 21.56). There were three different subgroups of palliative care core competency, namely, the 'low palliative care core competency group (31.2%)', the 'medium palliative care core competency group (47.2%)' and the 'low palliative care core competency group (21.6%)'. Professional title (odds ratio [OR] = 0.161, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.038-0.673, p = .012), position (OR = 0.111, 95% CI: 0.013-0.975, p = .047), work experiences (OR = 0.169, 95% CI: 0.030-0.965, p = .046) and autonomous learning capacity (OR = 3.298, 95% CI: 1.390-7.822, p = .007) were significant factors affecting the medium-level group, while position (OR = 0.101, 95% CI: 0.011-0.918, p = .042) and autonomous learning capacity (OR = 3.878, 95% CI: 1.447-10.396, p = .007) significantly influenced the low-level group.

The majority of ICU nurses were categorized in the low and medium-level palliative care core competency group; professional title, position, work experience and autonomous learning capacity were the main influencing factors.

ICU nurses should receive specific knowledge and training on palliative care, especially young nurses with limited work experience. Nursing managers and educators should provide targeted intervention strategies for nurses with different autonomous learning capacities to improve their core competencies in palliative care.