Experience of Caring for Terminal Patients for a Good Death: Case Study

Abstract

            All humans desire a good death. However, a good death cannot occur for everybody. Nurses can help terminal patients have a good death with a multidisciplinary team. A good death involves several factors such as the attitude, social aspects of death, religious faith, the physical suffering, psychological and spiritual suffering. From my experience as a nurse volunteer who took care of terminal patients in a hospital, I applied palliative care which consists of therapeutic communication techniques as tools for finding problems, ideas and beliefs of patients. Moreover, practicing the contemplation of death and Tibetan meditation which knows as Phowa and Tonglen are good meditational ways to death. According to my two case studies of terminally patients, I found that a good death depends on several factors such as personality and perception which are the internal factors of an individual. Patients who can accept the truth and are not afraid of death will die peacefully and their families can accept the death. In contrast, patients who do not prepare himself, they will die with more suffering both physically and mentally. In addition, this causes serious suffering to their families as well.