Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
method of thematic analysis.
Findings:
Findings revealed some similarities to previous studies:
Several nurses felt ill equipped to fully provide palliative care in
hospital due to
1. lack of time and resources
2. Lack of specialist knowledge and education
3. Insufficient medical team support
4. Nurses communicating poorly with the patient and poor
communication between members of the multidisciplinary team in
relation to diagnosis.
New findings from this study:
Nurses felt that:
1. There is a need for palliative care teams to be more involved
in the care of patients with non-malignant, chronic conditions.
2. Families should be listened to and included (if they wish) in
the dying process.
3. There is a lack of support in the community care services for
patients who wish to die at home.
4. Although religion and spiritual care is a vital factor they were
not confident in providing spiritual care for patients who were noncatholic.
Limitations & Strengths:
A limitation was that the experiences highlighted were from Irish
catholic female nurses. No men or individuals of a different culture
were present in the study.
The main strength of the study is in having given an opportunity for
nurses to describe their experiences when caring for elderly dying
patients in hospital.
Recommendations for Practice, Education & future Research:
Nurse Educators, Curriculum developers, Heads of department;
Clinical Managers and Practitioners must acknowledge and take
heed of the above experiences when planning future care for dying
elderly patients in hospital and when deciding the educational needs
of nurses so that a high standard of palliative care can be delivered.
Future research needs to include male nurse’s experiences and
those nurses of a different religious background. A review of the
current nursing educational curriculum needs to address the issue
on whether there is adequate provision given to palliative education
pre and post nurse registration.
Conclusion.
Patient and families have most sustained contact during the dying
process with nurses. In this study nurses outline several challenges
- 729 -