New graduate nurses’ experience of coping with patient dying and death in the Chinese cultural context: A mixed methods study

Description

There is increasing emphasis on improving the quality of end-of-life care to promote and achieve a good death for dying patients. Nurses, who have the most contact with dying patients, play a vital role in facilitating high-quality end-of-life care. Globally, there is evidence that new graduate nurses find it challenging and demanding to care for dying patients and deal with patient death. New graduate nurses report feeling inadequately prepared to meet dying patients’ physical, emotional and spiritual needs [1]. They described difficulty with demonstrating appropriate caring behaviours for patients during the dying process, and in supporting bereaved family members after patient death [1]. Their discomfort and reluctance for end-of-life care, and in particular for communicating with dying patients impacted their provision of end-of-life care [2].