Phenomenology Study on Nurses' Experiences in Understanding the Comfort of Children at the End-of-Life

CONTEXT: Patients' need for comfort at the end of their lives is rarely fulfilled. The comfort of patients at the end of their lives, especially children, is affected by nurses' understanding of what comfort means. AIMS: This research aims to explore and to understand the meaning of children's comfort at the end of their life for nurses. SETTING AND DESIGN: The research applied descriptive qualitative phenomenology design. SUBJECT AND METHODS: The study was conducted at Jakarta. Nurses who have experience in caring the child at the end of their life were in-depth interview with an open-ended question. Data were then analyzed using the Colaizzi method. RESULTS: This research identified six themes: striving to reduce children's suffering, realizing what children wanted, observing the children felt comfortable in their family's acceptance of their condition, facing internal and external conflict, experiencing mixed feelings knowing the children's condition, and requiring support from all parties. CONCLUSION: Nurses should provide information regarding children's end of life conditions to the family, to achieve family acceptances. Eventhough it was hard situation and rose internal conflict to nurses. It was found that children also felt comfortable at the end-of-life when they did not experience any suffering, and their wishes were granted. Subsequently, the nurses did not have mixed feelings when the children died. Therefore, evaluation of the training effectiveness that has been given to the nurses should be done to fulfill the need of the child's comfort at the end-of-life.