Nurses' experiences of paediatric palliative care

Abstract

Pediatric palliative care is an emerging specialty in the field of nursing which involves elevating the social, psychological and physical well-being of the patient. Conditions requiring palliative care are mostly life-limiting or life-threatening. Caring for these patients can be very demanding and emotionally draining for the nurses who work closely with these children and their families. The purpose of this thesis was to describe nurses’ experiences of pediatric palliative care. The research question was: What are nurses’ experiences of pediatric palliative care. To achieve this, a literature review was conducted. In order to retrieve recent materials, two complimentary online academic databases (LaureaFINNA and EBSCOhost) were searched using search words associated with the purpose and the research question. The articles were then subjected to two stages of pre-determined inclusion and exclusion criteria followed by data appraisal using John Hopkins research evidence appraisal tool. 12 articles were found suitable and relevant. Inductive content analysis was used for data analysis. From the findings, five major themes emerged: emotional burden, coping with own emotions, a sense of meaning and purpose for work, learning at work and lastly, challenges in provision of care. Nurses’ encounter in provision of pediatric palliative care was filled with a lot of emotional suffering resulting from varying circumstances and difficulties emerging from working with limited resources and insufficient knowledge. Despite the challenges nurses found it rewarding working in pediatric palliative care. For future studies, it was recommended that further research should be carried out to determine how paediatric palliative care training and education for nurses can be improved.