Making them more vulnerable: nursing insights on the irony of using questionnaires

TOPIC: Nursing insights on the experience of using standardized questionnaires during hospice care. PURPOSE: To explore and describe the experience of hospice staff using questionnaires on hospice clients: whether such instruments help or hinder the holistic, compassionate hospice practice and to set this topic on the research agenda in the hope of generating critical reflection on this important aspect of hospice care. SOURCES: A cross-section of hospice staff interviewed about their experience with administering the questionnaires. (Findings from research conducted with hospice clients on their experience of questionnaires are published separately.) CONCLUSIONS: The initial findings indicate that staff perceive questionnaires as negatively impacting on their efforts to engage in holistic and compassionate hospice practice and point to a major irony that questionnaires, designed for the supportive care of the vulnerable, actually make the vulnerable more vulnerable.