Ellen Reinhart
Barry University, USA
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Med Surg Pathol
Introduction: Quality end-of-life care is provided by a special type of nurse. The very nature of hospice work puts it at a higher level of complexity, which includes the ability to cope with death and dying on a daily basis. In 2014, the NHPCO estimated 1.6 to 1.7 million patients received hospice services.
Aim: The purpose of this research was to discover the essence and meaning of the lived experience of the hospice care nurse as primary provider of end-of-life care. Prior to this research, little was known about the hospice care nurses in the United States.
Philosophical Underpinning: This qualitative research was underpinned by constructivism and the philosophy of Husserl known as descriptive phenomenology.
Methods: Moustakas (1994) method was used to discover the lived experiences of 12 hospice care nurses who have at least two years of experience as the primary provider of end-of-life care. The semi-structured interviews were transcribed verbatim to capture the true essence and meaning of the hospice nurses experience providing care to patients and families daily.
Results: The four strong themes that emerged from this research are Feeling Attachment, Managing Workload, Lacking Support, and Providing Education. These themes clearly describe the essence and meaning of the lived experience of the hospice care nurses.
Conclusion: To this researcher’s knowledge, this is the first qualitative research about the lived experience of the hospice care nurse as primary provider of end-of-life care in the United States. It is my hope that this research will draw attention to the dynamics surrounding hospice nursing and the educational needs of health care providers and the general population.
