Caring for Dying Patients: Understanding Critical Care Nurses' Experiences

Area of Science:

• Nursing
• Psychology
• Critical Care Medicine

Background:

• Nurses have extensive patient contact, making their role crucial in end-of-life care.
• Caring for dying patients presents unique stressors for healthcare professionals.
• Understanding nurses' psychological adaptation is vital for effective patient and family support.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore and understand the lived experiences of critical care nurses caring for dying patients.
• To provide a descriptive qualitative account of nurses' adaptation processes in end-of-life care.
• To identify key themes and subthemes related to nurses' experiences with critically ill dying patients.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative descriptive study utilizing naturalistic inquiry.
• Semistructured, face-to-face interviews with 9 critical care nurses.
• Content analysis approach to identify emergent themes and subthemes.

Main Results:

• Eight major themes emerged: empathy, ambivalence, inevitability, inspiration, relationship, responsibility, self-preservation, and sorrow.
• Three subthemes contextualized these experiences: the patient, the family, and the healthcare team.
• Nurses employed mediating behaviors to manage reactions to patient deaths.

Conclusions:

• Critical care nurses psychologically adapt to caring for dying patients through identified themes and subthemes.
• Nurses function as adaptive systems when confronting the challenges of end-of-life care.
• Findings emphasize the need to inform nurses about these adaptation strategies to improve professional practice.