Nursing Home Staff Members' Experiences With and Beliefs About Unusual End-of-Life Phenomena

Twenty-two members of a nursing home took part in a study examining their experiences with and beliefs about unusual end-of-life phenomena (EOLP). Nearly all the staff members had witnessed and/or been told about residents holding on for someone to arrive or for a specific event to occur before dying (95% and 91%, respectively). Other commonly witnessed/reported EOLP included residents having sudden, unexpected moments of lucidity, sensing or feeling the presence of deceased residents, residents' dreaming about deceased relatives, friends or pets, and deathbed visions. More than three-quarters of the staff members regarded EOLP as transpersonal experiences, as comforting to dying residents and their family members, and as part of the dying process. Fourteen staff members described experiences they had had with EOLP in the nursing home. The most frequently described experiences involved the appearance of apparitions. Seventy-seven percent of the staff members expressed an interest in learning more about EOLP.