Barriers and Facilitators of Palliative Care for Adult Heart Failure Patients: Integrative Review

Introduction: Heart failure (HF) patients usually experience symptoms such as dyspnea, tiredness, cognitive impairment, and pain. Those symptoms contribute to a decline in physical functioning and a limitation in their ability to do their daily tasks. Palliative care (PC) is crucial for people with HF because it focuses on improving the quality of life and can reduce symptoms and improve function. Qatar aims to introduce PC services for adult patients with HF. Objective: This integrative review aims to investigate the barriers, facilitators, and the outcomes to the provision of palliative care among adult patients with HF. Methods: Whittemore and KnafI’s framework guided this integrative review. Using three databases, twenty (n=20) peer-reviewed articles, published between 2011 and 2022, were included in the integrative review. The Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool was used to assess the quality of these articles. The data was then extracted and thematically analyzed before being synthesized. Results: The barriers, facilitators, and outcomes of providing PC services to individuals with HF were identified from the perspectives of patients, healthcare providers, and healthcare organizations. Conclusion: Gaining a comprehensive understanding of these barriers, facilitators, and outcomes associated with providing PC services to adults with HF is central for the effective implementation of such services for this patient population in Qatar.