Journal of Palliative Care & Medicine
Open Access

Abstract

Statement of the problem: Good death has already been defined by previous studies. Most of them stated that good death definition included comfort which reflected as no suffering with physical and psychological comfort, support and connection to others and spiritual well-being. Some of them add several domains such as preparation of death, respected as individual and life completion. A good death may be influenced by personal values, social context, religions and cultural contexts, evidenced by different perspectives of some countries. Indonesia is a multicultural country and the most populous Muslim-majority country. Therefore, the purpose this study is to understand the components of good death among advanced cancer patients under Indonesian culture. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with convenience sampling in Central Java, Indonesia. Exploratory Factor Analysis with principal axis factoring and promax rotation was used to identify the domains of good death. Descriptive statistic was applied to present each domain and determine the important component of good death. Result: A total of 363 patients with advanced cancer were recruited. After factor analysis of the Components of Good Death questionnaire, 52 items were kept and covered by 5 domains. They were named as comfort, support & faith, dying with dignity, life completion and death awareness & death preparation and explained 51.87% total variance. The most important domain of good death is support & faith (M=6.28), whereas death awareness and death preparation (M=4.42) is the least important domain of good death. Conclusion: The findings represent advanced cancer patients’ perspectives regarding good death under Indonesian culture and beliefs. It can be used as a guidance to improve quality of care or end of life care for cancer patients, particularly in understanding what the patients desperately wants in the end of their life to achieve good death.

Biography

Wahyu Dewi graduated from National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan with speciality in palliative care. She has conducted the first Indonesia study to develop of Component of Good Death Indonesian version that reflected advanced cancer patients’ perspectives and beliefs in Muslim cultures. Before that, she also did several literature reviews regarding palliative care. The purpose of all her studies is to develop palliative care system in her country which is still at the stage of infancy.

E-mail: ririn.psik.aa@gmail.com