Abstract
Background and objective: Comfort is a complex experience, particularly important to palliative care patients. Although it is listed in nursing classifications and taxonomies there is a gap between theory and practice. Thus, little research has been done about patient's perceptions and experiences in this context of care. This paper aims to analyze palliative care patients’ experiences about comfort.Methods: Qualitative study with fifteen participants, using in-depth, semi-structured, face-to-face interviews, tape-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analyzed using interpretative content analysis.Results: Five main themes have been identified. Holistic comfort may be a difficult outcome for many end-of-life patients but the context of provision of care, the presence of family, the way information is managed, the search for meaning in life, and the need to keep life under control were perceived as important determinants for comfort.Conclusions: This study provides a general overview about comfort experiences and the main discomforts of hospitalized patients who are suffering from chronic and incurable diseases. Findings highlight comfort as a complex intervention within multidisciplinary palliative care team and this is supporting the nursing diagnosis “Impaired Comfort” as a syndrome. The study adds a contribution to the accuracy and completeness of nursing classifications and nursing practice in palliative care.
Highlights
Comfort is a critical goal of Palliative Care (PC),[1,2] which aims to provide patients and family the highest quality of life, through the prevention and relief of suffering in all human life dimensions.[3]
A second aim of this study is to contribute to the development of the nursing diagnosis “Impaired Comfort” (00214) listed in NANDA-I.[13]
Comfort seems to be a human response that integrates several diagnoses, for which nurses should provide different and similar and simultaneous interventions that are specific to the etiological factor
Summary
Comfort is a critical goal of Palliative Care (PC),[1,2] which aims to provide patients and family the highest quality of life, through the prevention and relief of suffering in all human life dimensions.[3]. Domain 1 is related with personal characteristics of considered complex[5,6,7,8] and not easy to implement and eval- the research team and their relationship with participants; douate in the clinical practice.[9,10,11] First, comforting is a broad intervention comprising several activities, performed by difmain 2 concerns the study design; and domain 3 concerns the analysis of the findings.[21] Specific information regarding ferent persons, and comprises patients and environmental fac- the methodological approach are provided in the following tors.[6,10] Secondly, nursing classifications and taxonomies sub-headings. Comfort is a complex experience, important to palliative care patients It is listed in nursing classifications and taxonomies there is a gap between theory and practice. The study adds a contribution to the accuracy and completeness of nursing classifications and nursing practice in palliative care
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