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Nursing In A Hospital‐Based Hospice Unit
Author(s) -
Samarel Nelda
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
image: the journal of nursing scholarship
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.009
H-Index - 80
eISSN - 1547-5069
pISSN - 0743-5150
DOI - 10.1111/j.1547-5069.1989.tb00117.x
Subject(s) - terminally ill , nursing , participant observation , intensive care unit , unit (ring theory) , medicine , humanism , qualitative research , ethnography , critically ill , psychology , palliative care , intensive care medicine , sociology , social science , mathematics education , anthropology , political science , law
The purpose of this ethnographic study was to describe and analyze the ways in which registered nurses interacted with those terminally ill and acutely ill patients typical of a hospital‐based hospice unit. Participant observation and informal interviews were used to collect data. Field notes were analyzed systematically using a constant comparative method of qualitative analysis. Data analysis revealed that patients' responsiveness rather than “acute,” or “terminal” labels determined the quality of the nurses' interactions with them. Humanistic caring was found to be the unifying focus of care for both acutely ill and terminally ill patients.