The Experience Undergraduate Nursing Students Facing The Reality Of Patient Death During Clinical Practice

Objective To explore the experience and perception of undergraduate nursing students facing the reality of patient death during clinical practice,so as to provide advices and references for carrying out death education for nursing students.Methods In this study,a descriptive qualitative study was adopted,and the maximum variation strategy was used to select the interview subjects.Clinical practice nursing students from several Class three Grade A hospitals in Zhejiang Province was chosen through the method of purposive sampling.Semi-structured face to face interviews were conducted with participants and all interviews were recorded.Interview field notes were written immediately after the interviews.Conventional content analysis was used for data analysis,through coding,classifying,extracting of themes.This process continued until theme saturation was reached.Results A total of 18 undergraduate nursing students were interviewed.After data analysis,the following themes emerged:experience of facing patient death,including experience of facing rescue,experience of facing death,experience of facing the family,psychological adjustment after death experience;reflecting on the death experience,including cherish life and live a meaningful life,respect life and do a good job in the end of life care,reinforce learning and improve a sense of responsibility of nursing;special understanding from death events,including raising a child up yet the child is failing to attend upon a dying parent,death is sometimes a kind of relief,the warmth of the last moment,life and death being decided by others;experiences and suggestions of death education,including the experience of hospital death education,the experience of school death education,the advice and suggestions of death education.Conclusion This study describes the inner experience of undergraduate nursing students facing the reality of patient death during clinical practice,and four themes are obtained:experience of facing patient death,reflecting on the death experience,special understanding from death events,experiences and suggestions of death education.During the clinical practice,hospital administrators and educators should pay attention to the experience of facing the reality of patient death and offer psychological support to them and help them to establish a correct view of death.