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The experiences of clinical nurses coping with patient death in the context of rising hospital deaths in China: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND: Chinese clinical nurses are increasingly confronting patient death, as the proportion of hospital deaths is growing. Witnessing patient suffering and death is stressful, and failure to cope with this challenge may result in decreased well-being of nurses and impediment of the provision o...

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Autores principales: Zhang, Jinxin, Cao, Yingjuan, Su, Mingzhu, Cheng, Joyce, Yao, Nengliang
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9494800/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36138401
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12904-022-01054-8
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author Zhang, Jinxin
Cao, Yingjuan
Su, Mingzhu
Cheng, Joyce
Yao, Nengliang
author_facet Zhang, Jinxin
Cao, Yingjuan
Su, Mingzhu
Cheng, Joyce
Yao, Nengliang
author_sort Zhang, Jinxin
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Chinese clinical nurses are increasingly confronting patient death, as the proportion of hospital deaths is growing. Witnessing patient suffering and death is stressful, and failure to cope with this challenge may result in decreased well-being of nurses and impediment of the provision of “good death” care for patients and their families. To our knowledge, few studies have specifically explored clinical nurses’ experiences coping with patient death in mainland China.  OBJECTIVE: We aimed to explore nurses’ experiences coping with patient death in China in order to support frontline clinical nurses effectively and guide the government in improving hospice care policy. METHODS: Clinical nurses were recruited using purposive and snowball sampling between June 2020 and August 2020. We gathered experiences of clinical nurses who have coped with patient death using face-to-face, semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Three thematic categories were generated from data analysis. The first was “negative emotions from contextual challenges.” This category involved grief over deaths of younger persons, pity for deaths without family, and dread related to coping with patient death on night duty. The second category was “awareness of mortality on its own.” Subthemes included the ideas that death means that everything stops being and good living is important because we all die and disappear. The third category was “coping style.” This category included focusing on treating dying patients, recording the signs and symptoms, and responding to changes in the patient’s condition. It also involved subthemes such as avoiding talk about death due to the grief associated with dying and death, and seeking help from colleagues. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical nurses’ emotional experiences are shaped by intense Chinese filial love, charity, and cultural attitudes towards death. Reasonable nurse scheduling to ensure patient and staff safety is a major priority. “Good death” decisions based on Chinese ethical and moral beliefs must be embedded throughout hospital care. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12904-022-01054-8.
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spelling pubmed-94948002022-09-23 The experiences of clinical nurses coping with patient death in the context of rising hospital deaths in China: a qualitative study Zhang, Jinxin Cao, Yingjuan Su, Mingzhu Cheng, Joyce Yao, Nengliang BMC Palliat Care Research BACKGROUND: Chinese clinical nurses are increasingly confronting patient death, as the proportion of hospital deaths is growing. Witnessing patient suffering and death is stressful, and failure to cope with this challenge may result in decreased well-being of nurses and impediment of the provision of “good death” care for patients and their families. To our knowledge, few studies have specifically explored clinical nurses’ experiences coping with patient death in mainland China.  OBJECTIVE: We aimed to explore nurses’ experiences coping with patient death in China in order to support frontline clinical nurses effectively and guide the government in improving hospice care policy. METHODS: Clinical nurses were recruited using purposive and snowball sampling between June 2020 and August 2020. We gathered experiences of clinical nurses who have coped with patient death using face-to-face, semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Three thematic categories were generated from data analysis. The first was “negative emotions from contextual challenges.” This category involved grief over deaths of younger persons, pity for deaths without family, and dread related to coping with patient death on night duty. The second category was “awareness of mortality on its own.” Subthemes included the ideas that death means that everything stops being and good living is important because we all die and disappear. The third category was “coping style.” This category included focusing on treating dying patients, recording the signs and symptoms, and responding to changes in the patient’s condition. It also involved subthemes such as avoiding talk about death due to the grief associated with dying and death, and seeking help from colleagues. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical nurses’ emotional experiences are shaped by intense Chinese filial love, charity, and cultural attitudes towards death. Reasonable nurse scheduling to ensure patient and staff safety is a major priority. “Good death” decisions based on Chinese ethical and moral beliefs must be embedded throughout hospital care. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12904-022-01054-8. BioMed Central 2022-09-22 /pmc/articles/PMC9494800/ /pubmed/36138401 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12904-022-01054-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://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
Zhang, Jinxin
Cao, Yingjuan
Su, Mingzhu
Cheng, Joyce
Yao, Nengliang
The experiences of clinical nurses coping with patient death in the context of rising hospital deaths in China: a qualitative study
title The experiences of clinical nurses coping with patient death in the context of rising hospital deaths in China: a qualitative study
title_full The experiences of clinical nurses coping with patient death in the context of rising hospital deaths in China: a qualitative study
title_fullStr The experiences of clinical nurses coping with patient death in the context of rising hospital deaths in China: a qualitative study
title_full_unstemmed The experiences of clinical nurses coping with patient death in the context of rising hospital deaths in China: a qualitative study
title_short The experiences of clinical nurses coping with patient death in the context of rising hospital deaths in China: a qualitative study
title_sort experiences of clinical nurses coping with patient death in the context of rising hospital deaths in china: a qualitative study
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9494800/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36138401
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12904-022-01054-8
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