Introduction/Background Access to palliative care (PC) is an essential component of health care and is integral to Universal Health Coverage. Cervical cancer (CC) and HIV remain the harbinger of morbidity and mortality in LMICs yet less than 5% of patients receive PC. MTRH is a referral center serving a catchment area of 20 million people with 20–40 patients with advanced CC seen weekly in clinic but with few trained PC specialists. This begs the question as to the ability of these clinicians in providing this essential service. This study seeks to address this question and to further evaluate avenues for the innovative improvement of this crucial service with involvement of all clinicians in the unit.

Methodology This was a cross-sectional study study carried out at the gynecologic oncology clinic in MTRH and 2 AMPATH satellite sites. Study population included all clinicians dealing with cervical cancer patients between April – June 2022. The data collection tool was the Palliative Care Attitude and Knowledge (PCAK) questionnaire.

Results Thirty-one clinicians work in this department with only 12.9% (4/31) being qualified gynecologic oncologists discussing with more than 15 families/month on PC for advanced CC patients. Clinical officers and nurses (42%, 13/31) were the primary clinicians in contact with CC patients and thus their main source of information yet they were the least trained with less than 1–2 hours of PC training. More than 50% of the clinicians were dissatisfied with the availability of PC services due to lack of proper training, insufficient time to communicate with patients and lack of availability of necessary drugs like opioids. The agreement that PC was initiated too late was approaching unity.

Conclusion Access to palliative care service in LMICs remains a challenge and is only initiated at the end of life. Focused training of clinical officers and nurses may improve service delivery.

Disclosures None