Table 1.

Summary of the key literature on public awareness of palliative care

Author and year	Location	Sample	Method	Awareness level
MacLeod et al. [24]	New Zealand	sampling matrix of 1011 adult subjects	Online survey	Findings revealed good understanding of the concept of palliative care, with 85% believing that palliative care staff provide comfort to people with terminal illness
Hirai et al. [4]	Japan	3984	Cross sectional anonymous questionnaire	Sixty-three per cent admitted no knowledge about palliative care
Benini et al. [25]	Italy	Random sample of 1897 adult subjects	Interviews	More than 40% had never heard of palliative care with only 23% declared having an adequate or precise idea of what PC is.
Australian Government Department of Health & Ageing [26]	Australia	Stratified sample of 1201 adult subjects	Mixed methods which included a telephone survey	Australians had a low to moderate knowledge and understanding of palliative care - 38% could explain palliative care to another, 33% only know a little, 13% have heard the term and 16% were not aware.
Claxton-Oldfield et al. [6]	Canada	Random sample 89 adult subjects	Face to face survey	Seventy-five per cent had heard of palliative care, however, only about half of these (48%) defined it as care for terminally ill or dying persons.
Wallace [16]	Scotland	Random sample 668 adult subjects	Telephone survey	Most reported some knowledge of palliative care (49%), with under a third reporting no knowledge.