Living With Tolerable Burden: Exploring the Ethical Self of Nurses Who Provide End-of-Life Care

Abstract

Providing end-of-life (EOL) care elicits complex emotions in nurses in the context of modern medicine. Nurses must not only watch their patients succumb to disease and death but also witness their suffering. This qualitative study adopted the perspective of "the other", as proposed by Emmanuel Levinas, to understand the experience of nurses who provide EOL care and the possibilities of nurses build up their ethical selves within the context of modern medicine. The study used interpretative phenomenology and group dialogue. Thirteen nurses who had EOL care experience were included. Data were drawn from the six transcripts of the group sessions, the researcher's diaries, and participants' feedback sheets. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings showed that nurses not only execute medical procedures but are also capable of self-molding into ethical subjects. The categories of participant experiences included: (1) encountering the death; (2) encountering my inner self; and (3) greeting the death. EOL nursing does not require abstract or decontextualized knowledge, but rather requires more experiential knowledge. EOL care may inspire nurses to become ethical persons and to gain wisdom if they shift away from a self-centered perspective to receive "the other". This study illustrates that EOL care should not depend solely on ethical codes or principles but should also adopt the attitudes of "for the other".