Nurses' Experiences of End-of-life Care for Elderly Patients in Long-term Care Hospitals

ABSTRACT

Purpose@#The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the essence and the meaning of nurses’ experiences of end-of-life care (EOLC) for elderly patients in the long-term care hospitals (LTCHs). @*Methods@#Data were gathered from 12 nurses who had been working at LTCHs in Korea through one-on-one interviews and the data were analyzed by Colaizzi's phenomenological method. @*Results@#The emergent 5 themes were ‘Doing the best for protecting patients’ life’, ‘Providing a comfortable dying process for patients’, ‘Supporting a family’s keeping on patient’s death’, ‘Reflecting on life’ and ‘Desiring for the establishment of a humanity end-of-life care environment’. @*Conclusion@#The end-of-life care for the elderly patients includes supporting elderly patients’ comfortable dying process and helping the family keep the death of the elderly. The results indicated that physical facilities and end-of-life nursing capacity should be established in LTCHs for improving the quality of EOLC.