Insights into the experiences of nurse educators in end-of-life care: A qualitative study

This study elucidated the experience of nurse educators instructing practicums for nursing students assigned to the care of end-of-life patients in fundamental nursing education.

With the growing population of older adults and increased mortality, nurses providing care for people at the end-of-life stage and their families (referred to as end-of-life nursing) will be increasingly important in Japanese healthcare settings. Acquiring knowledge and action-level methods can be insufficient for nursing students to approach the illness experiences of people at the end of their life and their families, increasing the importance of practicum in end-of-life nursing to enable learning from experience. This situation raised the need to study how nurse educators for nursing care for end-of-life patients experience the situation and what they practice as observed through the educator's standpoint to devise better teaching methods for end-of-life nursing practica.

Interpretative phenomenology was used.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six nurse educators. Participants were interviewed about their experiences in teaching nursing students who care for people in the final stages of life. Data were analyzed using Benner's Interpretive phenomenological approach.

Nurse educators teaching students assigned to end-of-life patients experienced the [sudden appearance of patients themselves] and were involved in the nursing care for these end-of-life patients. They [seized the opportune "moments" for teaching] while [placing the value of practicum in end-of-life nursing in the "fragments" that students find] and then acknowledged that students were becoming aware of the core values of end-of-life nursing, even though they could not perform the techniques of care. Nurse educators also [recognized students as learners at the "borderline stage"] who are still distinct from nurses and valued students in their current state of development with hopes and expectations for further growth.

This study highlighted the importance of nurse educators leveraging their practical knowledge to provide direct guidance to nursing students in clinical settings. The educators approached patient care with intentionality, prioritizing the well-being of patients while engaging in co-existent care alongside the students. Simultaneously, they respected the nursing students in their transition to becoming nurses, harboring hopes and expectations for continued growth. Concurrently, they were curious about the patient and student. They sought to balance the interests of the two parties representing dissimilar temporality, thereby applying their intuitive embodied intelligence into practice. Such experiences were also interpreted from the temporality of nursing students in a transitional stage of becoming nurses.