Nursing students' perspectives on palliative care for older patients with end of life

Abstract

The care of elderly people who are at the end of life should be holistic so that they can leave in peace and with human dignity. The purpose of this descriptive qualitative study was to describe nursing students' perspectives on palliative care for elderly patients. The participants were 15 nursing students from a nursing college from Boromarajonnani College of Nursing, Phayao who had completed their practical training in nursing with health problems 3 and were caring for elderly people at the end of life. Data were collected using a personal data collection form, a personal interview questionnaire, a semi-structured interview questionnaire, in-depth interviews, field recordings, a reflection sheet, and a dictaphone. Data from the interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using the content analysis method and Lincoln and Guba's credibility construction research approach. Student nurses' perspectives on palliative care for elderly patients consisted of 4 themes. 1. There was a sense of regret and negative feelings toward the death of a family member. 2. The importance of palliative care with 2 subthemes: 2.1 Ensuring that the patient dies peacefully and 2.2 Making the patient feel as comfortable as possible by providing humanized care 3. Characteristics of palliative care for the elderly at the end of life with 3 subthemes: 3.1 physical care, 3.2 psychological care, and 3.3 caring for family members of terminally ill elderly patients and 4. Learning from caring for terminally ill elderly with 2 subthemes: 4.1 self-esteem in applying nursing knowledge and skills to care for patients and 4.2 importance of caring with human care. The results of the study serve as a basis for developing an educational model for palliative care of elderly patients that is consistent with the context, experiences, beliefs, and perspectives of learners and leads to high-quality care of terminally ill elderly patients.