What is palliative care nursing?

Duke, S. (2003) What is palliative care nursing? 8th European Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care, The Hague, Netherlands. 01 - 04 Apr 2003.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Other)

Abstract

The need to define palliative nursing is well documented. It is driven by the call to articulate nurses' contribution to the care of people with life-threatening illness and to make explicit the hidden or invisible practices that typify this care. This drive is motivated by the need to give nursing a voice in this specialty, and to develop an evidence base that describes and evaluates their role. This paper will examine the degree to which recent research has achieved these aims. The debate will focus on the body of current knowledge of palliative nursing, drawing on a research published between 1987 and 2002 and organised according to the four domains that constitute the process of nursing: patient experience of nursing care; patient/nurse interpersonal relationships; nursing care delivery; clinical environment (Kim 1987). Whilst the research identified does not give a definitive answer to the question 'what is palliative nursing' the growth in research over the last few years enables a tentative description to be drawn, albeit predominately within the domains of patient experience and interpersonal relationships. Research approaches that have enabled the expression of palliative nursing, such as narrative and story telling, will be examined to assess the promise these hold for developing knowledge of palliative nursing related to care delivery and managing clinical environments. The paper will conclude by examining the need for and the validity of the question 'what is palliative nursing'

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