Author(s)

Yuko Harding^1*, Yoshiko Ishibashi², Mikiko Mori², Masako Yano¹, Michiyo Ando¹

¹Faculty of Nursing, St. Mary’s College, Kurume, Japan.
²Department of Nursing, St. Mary’s Hospital, Kurume, Japan.

Background: The experiences of death conference (DC) are regarded as improving the quality of nurses’ terminal care and developing nursing minds. Few studies in Japan clarify quantitatively how nurses’ participation in DC is related to nurses’ terminal care. Aim: This study aims to clarify the relationship between DC experiences and nurses’ terminal care using the prepared Terminal Care Nursing Self-Assessment Sheet. Method: The study is approved by the Ethics Review Board of St. Mary’s College, and the hospital where the survey was conducted. This study was an observational and cross-sectional study using an anonymous, self-completed questionnaire composed of the newly created Terminal Care Nursing Self-Assessment Sheet. Its evaluation items consist of six categories (Reflection, Cooperation, Response to patients, Response to patients’ family, Specific measures for nursing, and Feelings of the nurse), and 14 questions. The questionnaires were conducted for 144 nurses in the ER, ICU, and Palliative Care Ward (Hospice Ward) in a general hospital in Japan. For analysis, JMP ver.14.2 was used to perform a Chi-square test, Wilcoxon/Mann Whitney test, univariate, and multivariate logistic regression analysis. Results: One hundred thirty-nine participants (97%) were included in the final analysis. Forty-three nurses had DC experiences, and 96 had no experience. The median number (IQR; interquartile range) of DC experiences was 5.5 (2 - 22.5). There were significant differences in five of the above categories; however, there was no significant association in the five questions of the nurse’s stress on response to patients and patients’ family and specific measures for nursing regarding postmortem treatment for patients between DC experiences and Nurses’ terminal care. Conclusion: DC that looks back on terminal care has significance as an opportunity to consider the way of terminal concerns and direction of future care. It is required to raise the quality of DC for focusing on reducing nurses’ stress on terminal care and anxiety about postmortem treatment for patients.

Death Conference, DC, Terminal Care, Self-Assessment, Nurses

Harding, Y. , Ishibashi, Y. , Mori, M. , Yano, M. and Ando, M. (2020) Relationship between Death Conference Experiences and Nurses’ Terminal Care. Open Journal of Nursing, 10, 381-395. doi: 10.4236/ojn.2020.104026.