Lived Experiences in the End of Life Care Among Icu Staff Nurses

10384 Words42 Pages
CHAPTER 1 THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND Introduction One of the nursing functions of an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nurse is providing care for terminally-ill patients and assists them towards a peaceful death. However, in helping those patients to approach a peaceful death in an intensive care unit, nurses deal with many difficulties such as communicating bad news, counselling the persons' families, and facilitating a peaceful death when time is limited. ICU nurses frequently face patients’ death and endure not only stressful, physically tiring and culturally challenging but also psychologically and emotionally draining environment which lead them to experience grief (De Castro, 2010). Caring for terminally-ill patients can cause tension, conflict, moral distress, grief, and suffering for critical care nurses that affect job satisfaction and lead nurses to feel burned out (Elperm, 2005). The life expectancy in the Philippines has increased to 68.99 years on male and 75.03 years on female (Index Muni, 2011) and with the most leading causes of mortality as follows: diseases of the heart (95.5%), diseases of the vascular system (63.8%), and malignant neoplasms (49.5%) (Department of Health, 2011). According to data recently published by the World Health Organization, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) account for a significant portion of deaths worldwide. The leading cause of deaths worldwide (according to 2012 data) is ischaemic heart disease (12.8%), followed by stroke and other cerebrovascular disease (10.8%). Also in the top ten leading causes of death were chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (5.8%), trachea, bronchus and lung cancers (2.4%) and diabetes mellitus (2.2%). As the growth of the older adult population continues to increase, the demand for nurses to develop expertise in caring for terminally-ill patients also will increase. Also, people are

More about Lived Experiences in the End of Life Care Among Icu Staff Nurses

Open Document