- Title
- The effects of the ward environment and language in palliative care : a qualitative exploratory study of Victorian nurses’ perspectives
- Creator
- Miller, Elizabeth; Porter, Joanne; Barbagallo, Michael
- Date
- 2023
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/198714
- Identifier
- vital:19084
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.1177/19375867231177299
- Identifier
- ISSN:1937-5867 (ISSN)
- Abstract
- Objectives: The current study aimed to explore regional nurses’ perspectives of how bad news is delivered and the physical, natural, social, and symbolic environments where these conversations occur. Background: In regional hospitals within Victoria, Australia, palliative and end-of-life patients are cared for in acute wards that are often busy, noisy, and do not have a palliative psychosocial focus. On the other hand, Palliative Care Units (PCUs) have more home-like dedicated spaces, yet nearly all these facilities are in metropolitan areas. Diagnostic/prognostic (bad news) conversations about life-limiting illnesses often occur at the bedside in both environments. Method: Nurses providing palliative or end-of-life care in regional or metropolitan Victorian hospital inpatient wards were invited to interview and recruited through social media and snowballing. Six semi-structured, audio-recorded online interviews were conducted between March and May 2022, and themes were developed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results: Semi-structured online interviews were conducted with six female, registered nurses, four of whom worked in regional Victorian hospitals and two in metropolitan PCUs as Nurse Unit Managers. Three central themes were developed: “conducting family meetings,” “palliative care practice,” and “the environment matters.” Conclusions: A therapeutic environment for palliative patients and their families consists of home-like ambience and aesthetics and a psychosocial environment created by staff who can provide holistic palliative care. Holistic palliative care requires mentoring and mirroring of expert practice to increase the expertise and capacity of the palliative care workforce in acute general hospital wards. © The Author(s) 2023.
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications Inc.
- Relation
- Health Environments Research and Design Journal Vol. 16, no. 4 (2023), p. 146-158
- Rights
- All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
- Rights
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Rights
- Copyright © The Author(s) 2023
- Rights
- Open Access
- Subject
- 4203 Health services and systems; Acute ward; Bad news; COVID-19; End-of-life; Home-like; Hospital environment; Language; Palliative; Qualitative research; Therapeutic landscapes
- Full Text
- Reviewed
- Funder
- The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Elizabeth M. Miller is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Stipend and RTP Fee-Offset Scholarship through Federation University Australia.
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