Family nursing for end-of-life cancer patients in the general Japanese hospital ward

Abstract

Aims: Our purpose is to describe how nurses care for the families of terminal cancer patients in a general Japanese hospital ward. Subjects and Methods: Subjects were general-ward nurses at A Hospital with at least three years of cancer nursing experience. Semi structured interviews were transcribed for inductive qualitative analysis. Ethical considerations were approved by the hospital's ethical committee. Results: The 19 nurses interviewed had 3-20 years of experience in cancer nursing. The 5 core categories were "clinical wisdom, knowledge, and art as a basis for family support", "establishment of mutual trust with a family", "clarification of situation/problems within a family", "caring for the family as a whole", and "self-evaluation of clinical practice." Conclusion: Experience in family nursing with terminal cancer patients brought sense to care and motivated nurses to care better for families. Our findings suggest that it is necessary to have a chance to review their experience to increase family nursing quality.