Barriers in Caring for Critically Ill and Dying Patients in Emergency Rooms: Nurses’ Experiences

Abstract

Death is unavoidable and occurs anytime and anywhere; especially, Emergency Room is a place that nurses always deal with death s.  The purpose of this qualitative research article is to describe barriers to care for critically ill and dying patients in emergency settings as perceived by ED nurses in three tertiary hospitals in Songkhla province. Informants were nurses who 1) have been working in ED for at least 2 years; 2) have experiences in caring for critically ill and dying patients at least 2 cases; and 3) are willing to share  information. Data were collected between April and July, 2013. Twelve nurses were agreed to participate. In-depth interview was used as data collection method and content analysis was applied to analyze data. Trustworthiness was established by following Lincoln and Guba’s criteria.

The findings of this study reveals that barriers to care for critically ill and dying patients can be categorized into 3 themes; environmental structure of ED; organizational culture and working system; and competencies of doctors and nurses.

The findings of this study provide an understanding of barriers to care for critically ill and dying patients and can be used to develop nursing care system in order to improve the quality of care for critically ill and dying patients.