EXPERIENCES OF NURSES WORKING IN PALLIATIVE CARE Dissertation

EXPERIENCES OF NURSES WORKING IN PALLIATIVE CARE - Dissertation Example (Harris, Flowers, Noble, 2011) In a qualitative study by (Brajtman, Higuchi, McPherson, 2006) they looked into the matter related to the challenges the nurses face in palliative care, to explore their experiences in caring for patients with terminal delirium and their families. This qualitative research will emphasize the importance of qualitative interviews as most powerful method for understanding the experiences and meanings related to the topic. This study was conducted in a palliative care unit located in a large Canadian city hospital for 5 nurses working in an interdisciplinary palliative care unit and 4 nurses form palliative home care nursing team located in the same city. Few interview questions have been generated for the nurses to proceed with the qualitative study. Based on the questions results which has been found are like most of the participants said that they experience distress while caring for palliative care patients. They said that if they gather convenient skil ls and knowledge in the identification and diagnosis they can help to support the patient in better way and family during disturbed conditions. Understanding the unique nursing experience is very much important in the process of providing the nurses with required support to make them strong and help them to provide care in challenging situations. Nurses also identified their team members as most major source of support. They also mentioned that effective teamwork would help them to deal with palliative care patients and their families more efficiently. There is need for proper education and training for the nurses to face challenges with palliative care patients. Lack of education may experience in serious stress for these nurses in care of the dying people and their families. It is important to check that nurses should receive appropriate knowledge, skills and support to care for this patient (Brajtman, Higuchi, McPherson, 2006, pp.6-7). Thus from this study we can understand that proper opportunities should be provided to the nurses so that they can face challenges confidently. The support of organization, teammates and family will enhance the quality of care. The number of sample chosen here is very small. A primary research should contain minimum 20 samples to carry on with a proper research. But here amount is very small which is not very good to conduct a research. A larger sample would have been beneficial to obtain greater depth of data as there was no clear evidence to overcome the challenges. White, et al (2004) found similar trends in his study. He explored with qualitative descriptive study using semi structured interviews with nurses caring for palliative care patients. Here 9 experienced palliative care nurses were interviewed. The participants here explained about their experience and challenges they face regularly. The nurses reported that they have enormous impact on their work and personal lives. The nurses here describe about two types of su fferings, physical and emotional or psychological. Most of the nurses reported here that they try their best to relieve a patients suffering and when they cannot help the patient with such condition they get a feeling of helplessness, distress, frustration and a sense of failure. Some of the nurses also mentioned that they did not want to dwell with those things and thus tried to go back home with a fresh