How nurses cope with patient death: A systematic review and qualitative meta‐synthesis

Aims and objectives

To review literature on nurses’ coping strategies with patient death.

Background

Dealing with the loss of a patient was viewed as one of the most demanding and challenging encounters in clinical practice. Those nurses who are not competent in coping with patient death may be inadequate in supporting dying patients and their family members, and minimise the quality of end‐of‐life care. To get a broader understanding of how nurses cope with patient death and to develop meaningful and effective interventions, a systematic review which would help underpin the multidimensional approaches is needed.

Design

A systematic review.

Methods

Exhaustive searching in ten databases: CINAHL Plus, EMBASE, MEDLINE, AMED, PsycINFO, ProQuest Health & Medical Complete, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, Google Scholar, EThOS and CareSearch. Meta‐aggregation was used to synthesise the findings of the included studies.

Results

This systematic review aggregated ten categories from the sixteen qualitative studies included, and then two synthesised findings were derived: intrinsic resources and extrinsic resources. The intrinsic resources consisted of setting boundaries, reflection, crying, death beliefs, life and work experience, and daily routines and activity. The extrinsic resources were comprised of talking and being heard, spiritual practices, education and programmes, and debriefing.

Conclusion

This systematic review synthesised the findings about what resources nurses use when coping with patient death and made recommendations on future directions. Areas which could be developed to improve deficiencies that nurses had when faced with the losses of their patients were identified. Nurses need more support resources, which better assist them in coping with patient death.

Relevance to clinical practice

The results of this systematic review could provide evidence for nurses’ coping strategies when dealing with patient death, and the recommendations could be employed by nurses to cope with the losses of patients.     

Ovarian Cancer: Advances in First-Line Treatment Strategies with a Particular Focus on Anti-Angiogenic Agents

Ovarian cancer is an important health concern worldwide. The majority of patients present with advanced disease, and despite initial chemosensitivity, most relapse and die from their disease. Better therapeutic options are urgently required. Maximal surgical debulking in combination with platinum/taxane chemotherapy has been the standard of care in advanced ovarian cancer since the mid-1990s. Trials investigating the addition of a third chemotherapeutic agent have disappointingly failed to demonstrate benefit. Intra-peritoneal therapy demonstrated improvements in outcomes in some trials, but at the cost of increased toxicity and inconvenience. Encouragingly, prospective data has now demonstrated benefits with bevacizumab in both the first-line and relapsed settings; however, interpretation is complex, particularly considering recent data demonstrating non-inferiority of neo-adjuvant chemotherapy with delayed primary surgery, and other data demonstrating a substantial improvement in outcome as a result of first-line paclitaxel dose fractionation. This article reviews the recent advances in ovarian cancer treatment and discusses current management and key areas for future research.     

Models of Primary Care for Substance Misusers: the Lothian experience

Introduction: The Community Drug Problem Service (CDPS) was established in 1988 in response to an epidemic of HIV infection among IVDUs in Lothian. It developed a shared-care model of service delivery with GPs. By 1997, this model began to show signs of strain. Method: A self-report questionnaire was sent to every GP in Lothian (N = 530), to get some measure of GP opinion regarding working with drug users, substitute prescribing and their views of the CDPS. A reply paid envelope was included. All data were entered on a database and analyses carried out using SPSS. Results: The response rate was 86%. The GPs were an experienced group. Virtually all were prescribing or had done so in the past. They wanted to get drug users off drugs and were concerned that this was not happening within an acceptable timescale. There were mixed views on who should see and prescribe for drug users. Some GPs would not do this work and others had reached capacity. In terms of CDPS service delivery, top priority for GPs was rapid, good-quality assessment of referrals. Overall, however, there was general satisfaction with the service being provided. Proposed Solutions: The CDPS developed a central Assessment Team to provide an equitable service to all Edinburgh city sectors. A Locality Clinic was piloted in the South-West sector of the city to provide a prescribing service for GPs who chose not to prescribe or had reached capacity.