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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Digital Public Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1497855

Assessing the Quality, Reliability, and Transparency of YouTube Videos on Spiritual Palliative Care: A Content Analysis

Provisionally accepted
Fhaied Almobarak Fhaied Almobarak *
  • Fundamentals of Nursing Department, College of Nursing, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Aims: To inspect the quality, reliability, and transparency of YouTube videos on spiritual palliative care using systematic scoring benchmarks like JAMA and Modified DISCERN. Background: Spiritual care is vital in palliative care, and YouTube is a popular platform for health information, though the quality of such content remains unexplored. The present study is the first analysis of spiritual palliative care videos on YouTube, revealing the types of creators (e.g., educational institutions, healthcare providers) and dominant video formats (documentaries, testimonials, lectures) and assessing the overall quality and transparency of the content. Design: A cross-sectional qualitative analysis. Methods: On 19th April 2024, a sample of fifty spiritual palliative care YouTube videos was compiled and examined for quality, reliability, and transparency. JAMA and Modified DISCERN scoring systems were used. The first step in data analysis was determining the variables' normality using the Shapiro-Wilk test. As the data was not normally distributed, non-parametric methods were used for group-wise comparisons and correlation analysis, including the Spearman's test and Kruskal-Wallis test. Results: The study found that the quality, reliability, and transparency of spiritual palliative care YouTube videos were moderate. The mean JAMA score for transparency was slightly better than the mean Modified DISCERN score for the quality/reliability of the sample videos. Conclusion: The results indicate that YouTube videos about spiritual palliative care have moderate quality, reliability, and transparency. Impact: This study addresses the ambiguity surrounding the quality, reliability, and transparency of spiritual palliative care videos on YouTube. The results highlight the lack of superior quality, reliability, and transparency in the available video content. Concerned authorities must recognize the risk of exposure to substandard health-related YouTube content. There is a need for initiatives to improve patient access to high-quality information about the spiritual aspect of palliative care to promote public health.

    Keywords: quality, Reliability, Transparency, Jama, Modified DISCERN, spirituality, Palliative Care, Nursing

    Received: 18 Sep 2024; Accepted: 09 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Almobarak. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Fhaied Almobarak, Fundamentals of Nursing Department, College of Nursing, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.