Intensive care nurses’ perceptions of ‘good’ end-of-life care for the adult patient who has had treatment withdrawn or withheld: A North Island non-metropolitan ICU nursing study.

Intensive care is a place for the critically ill. It is a place of advanced technology where alarms, lights and noise are plentiful and where privacy and dignity are not always able to be given the highest priority. ICUs are places catering for the most acutely unwell patients, a number of these patients do not recover. A percentage of those patients who die, do so after extensive discussions, when treatment is withdrawn or withheld. The focus turns from cure to comfort for the patient and their family. Providing a ‘good’ death for the adult patient who has had treatment withdrawn or withheld is a challenge in an environment where the emphasis is on cure. I designed a questionnaire to investigate nurse’s perceptions of ‘good’ end-of-life care. Nurses in eight ICUs who worked at the bedside were requested to numerically rank 10 important end-of-life issues as they perceived to be most important for the patient, family and themselves. The nurses were then asked to rank those same issues for how well the unit they work in performs. Some open-ended questions were also asked to combine the qualitative approach with the quantitative, to add richness to data. Results showed the top four issues nurses perceived to be most important when providing ‘good’ end-of-life care was the administration of medication for analgesia and symptom relief, preservation of the patient’s dignity, maintaining open communication channels for the patient, family and health care team and unlimited family visiting. Featuring consistently last was the documentation of an alternative care plan based on maximising patient comfort and attention to environmental issues. It appears generally end-of-life care in non-metropolitan ICUs is done reasonably well. Barriers to providing ‘good’ end-of-life care documented by nurses in this study are similar to results from nurses who have studied similar themes overseas.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Nursing

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Grantor

Eastern Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Hine, Catherine

• North Island (N.Z.)
• New Zealand
• intensive care nurses
• intensive care units (ICU)
• death and dying
• end of life care
• perceptions
• barriers
• surveys

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10652/6610

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:null:10652/6610