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Published on: January 12, 2018
Ethical dilemmas for palliative care nurses: systematic review
Shuwan Geng1, Lei Zhang2, Quan Zhang3
1Center for Geriatric Healhcare Services and Health Education, Qufu Normal University, Qufu, Shandong, China.
Background:
Nurses play a unique and critical role in palliative care, and it is noteworthy that nurses often encounter ethical dilemmas in this field.
Objective:
This review aims to conduct a summarised synthesis of the latest research on the ethical considerations nurses faced in palliative care.
Methods:
We conducted a rigorous systematic review of relevant existing studies published in high-quality English peer-reviewed journals from January 2017 to July 2023. We identified a total of 4492 articles (1029 in Web of Science, 1570 in PubMed and 1893 in Science Direct). Out of these, only 13 studies met the inclusion criteria.
Results:
Following the thematic analysis, the ethical considerations reported in these 13 studies were grouped into three main themes and four subthemes: ethical issues in communication (ethical issues in communication with patients, ethical issues in communication with families), ethical issues in decision-making (autonomy, dignity) and moral distress in palliative care.
Conclusion:
This study elaborated on the ethical challenges faced by nurses in their communication with patients and families as well as decision-making and analysed the causes and effects of ethical distress, hoping to give a hand to ethical issues for nurses' work in palliative care.
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