Reflections of nursing professionals on palliative care

Abstract

Palliative care aims to provide quality of life for patients and family, seeking to alleviate problems and symptoms, focusing on relieving suffering. The nursing team extensively participates in this care, which can emotionally overload the professional. Hence, this descriptive, qualitative, and exploratory study sought to clarify the feelings of nursing professionals working in palliative care. Data was collected by a semi-structured script applied to ten nursing professionals from the palliative care sector of a hospital. Emotional overload and difficulties in addressing certain feelings were observed in the interviewees. Results show a lack of strategies to mitigate these overloads in the work environment and the lack of palliative care in the health curricula. Some of the feelings described were difficult to manage, especially by less experienced professionals.