Terminal care

The purpose of this study was to develop a set of considerations that administrators could use in placing nurses who dealt with dying patients. An attempt was made to determine whether nurses who reflected certain personal backgrounds would have an attitude about death and the dying patient that would subsequently predispose them to giving inadequate nursing care to these patients. To determine which items needed to be considered by nursing administrators in the placement of staff nurses, a questionnaire was completed by 248 senior medical-surgical nursing students at five college campuses in three counties in the State of Florida. It was shown that there was a significant relationship between the student nurses' attitudes toward death and dying (increased fear), their anticipated response patterns to death-related situations in the hospital work setting (inadequate care) and the thirteen background variables. More specifically, those student nurses with an increased fear of death and dying were more inclined to give inadequate care to the dying patient. Those student nurses with specific background characteristics were also more apt to give inadequate nursing care to their patients in such situations that dealt with suicide, abortion, euthansia or death in general.

The objective of this study was to describe the lived experience of caring for persons who had a peaceful death in the intensive care units in Thailand. A qualitative research design informed by hermeneutic phenomenology was used to analyze data. Participants were 10 intensive care nurses working at adult intensive care units in south Thailand. A snowball purposive sampling method was used to select the participants. Participant inclusion criteria were at least six months' critical care nursing experience, experience in caring for a person who had peaceful death, able to describe peaceful death, and willing to participate in this study. Participants who met the inclusion criteria were interviewed. Face-to-face individual verbal interviews were conducted in the Thai language. These interviews were audiotape recorded. Descriptions were transcribed and translated for data analysis. Van Manen's (1990) hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used to analyze and interpret the data. The findings of this study were presented in each of 4 categories of the lived world of temporality, of spatiality, of corporeality, and of relationality. The description of the lived experience of caring for persons who had a peaceful death in ICU was, "understanding the other through the valuing of experience and enhancing relations with others by recognizing time is short and is a priority." This study may contribute to nursing knowledge of the end-of-life care to enhance a peaceful death in intensive care units congruently with Thai culture and society. In addition, this study directs the translations of its knowledge into implications that will benefit in helping Thai nursing to move forward. The implications of this study in advance will benefit terminally ill persons and family members regarding receiving good quality end-of-life care.