The Lived Experience of Irish palliative care nurses

Abstract

Hermeneutic phenomenology has been identified as a valuable framework for undertaking nursing research and enables nurses to explore aesthetic knowledge about their practice. The existential perspective of Hans-Georg Gadamer (1976) emphasizes the unique place of history in shaping meaning about the current lifeworld. The active role of the researcher, i.e. creating data with the respondent, rather than passive objectivity, is valued in hermeneutic phenomenology. This study focuses on the lived experience of 16 registered nurses working in a palliative home care setting. The aim of the study was to gain a deeper understanding of the meaning palliative nurses derive from working with the dying and also to establish how this is reflected in Irish culture. Five expressions of unique commonality which encapsulated the essence of being an Irish palliative care nurse were derived from bilingual in-depth interviews using Irish poetry — a culturally sensitive research tool. Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy provided a valuable approach to exploring this previously unexplored area of nursing research (Gadamer, 1976) and its use as a potential framework for subsequent palliative nursing research warrants further investigation.