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Older persons’ thoughts about death and dying and their experiences of care in end-of-life: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND: Few studies have focused on how older persons living in nursing homes perceive their last period of life. Furthermore, previous research on older persons’ perceptions of death and dying is limited. Hence, there is an urgent need to explore their experiences during their final period in l...

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Autores principales: Tjernberg, Johanna, Bökberg, Christina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7739469/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33327960
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12912-020-00514-x
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author Tjernberg, Johanna
Bökberg, Christina
author_facet Tjernberg, Johanna
Bökberg, Christina
author_sort Tjernberg, Johanna
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Few studies have focused on how older persons living in nursing homes perceive their last period of life. Furthermore, previous research on older persons’ perceptions of death and dying is limited. Hence, there is an urgent need to explore their experiences during their final period in life. AIM: To explore thoughts about death and dying and experiences of care in end-of-life among older persons living in nursing homes. METHODS: This study employed a qualitative approach including individual interviews with 36 older persons living in Swedish nursing homes. Questions related to quality of life; physical health; thoughts about death, dying, and the future; and experiences related to the living condition and environment were asked. The interview transcripts were analysed through content analysis. The study was approved by the Regional Ethics Review Board (reference number: 2015/4). RESULTS: The analysis resulted in the identification of three main thematic categories: The unavoidable and unknown end of life, Thoughts on control and Living your last period of life at a nursing home. The older persons did not fear death itself but had some worries about dying. Spending the last stage of life at a nursing home contributed to different thoughts and feelings among the older persons. With a few exceptions, older persons characterized life at the nursing home as boring and felt they were surrounded by people who did not belong there. CONCLUSIONS: This study indicates a need for older persons to talk about death, dying and end-life issues. Furthermore, this study highlighted that the co-residence of cognitively healthy persons and persons with dementia in the same ward adversely affected cognitively healthy persons. This situation resulted in there being not enough time to both handle the care needs of persons with dementia and have the conversations that cognitively healthy persons desired, such as conversations about thoughts about existence, that could have improved their quality of life. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT02708498 Date of registration 16 February 2016.
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spelling pubmed-77394692020-12-17 Older persons’ thoughts about death and dying and their experiences of care in end-of-life: a qualitative study Tjernberg, Johanna Bökberg, Christina BMC Nurs Research Article BACKGROUND: Few studies have focused on how older persons living in nursing homes perceive their last period of life. Furthermore, previous research on older persons’ perceptions of death and dying is limited. Hence, there is an urgent need to explore their experiences during their final period in life. AIM: To explore thoughts about death and dying and experiences of care in end-of-life among older persons living in nursing homes. METHODS: This study employed a qualitative approach including individual interviews with 36 older persons living in Swedish nursing homes. Questions related to quality of life; physical health; thoughts about death, dying, and the future; and experiences related to the living condition and environment were asked. The interview transcripts were analysed through content analysis. The study was approved by the Regional Ethics Review Board (reference number: 2015/4). RESULTS: The analysis resulted in the identification of three main thematic categories: The unavoidable and unknown end of life, Thoughts on control and Living your last period of life at a nursing home. The older persons did not fear death itself but had some worries about dying. Spending the last stage of life at a nursing home contributed to different thoughts and feelings among the older persons. With a few exceptions, older persons characterized life at the nursing home as boring and felt they were surrounded by people who did not belong there. CONCLUSIONS: This study indicates a need for older persons to talk about death, dying and end-life issues. Furthermore, this study highlighted that the co-residence of cognitively healthy persons and persons with dementia in the same ward adversely affected cognitively healthy persons. This situation resulted in there being not enough time to both handle the care needs of persons with dementia and have the conversations that cognitively healthy persons desired, such as conversations about thoughts about existence, that could have improved their quality of life. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT02708498 Date of registration 16 February 2016. BioMed Central 2020-12-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7739469/ /pubmed/33327960 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12912-020-00514-x Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Tjernberg, Johanna
Bökberg, Christina
Older persons’ thoughts about death and dying and their experiences of care in end-of-life: a qualitative study
title Older persons’ thoughts about death and dying and their experiences of care in end-of-life: a qualitative study
title_full Older persons’ thoughts about death and dying and their experiences of care in end-of-life: a qualitative study
title_fullStr Older persons’ thoughts about death and dying and their experiences of care in end-of-life: a qualitative study
title_full_unstemmed Older persons’ thoughts about death and dying and their experiences of care in end-of-life: a qualitative study
title_short Older persons’ thoughts about death and dying and their experiences of care in end-of-life: a qualitative study
title_sort older persons’ thoughts about death and dying and their experiences of care in end-of-life: a qualitative study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7739469/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33327960
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12912-020-00514-x
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