Death Confrontation, Spiritual-Existential Experience and Caring Attitudes in Palliative Care Nurses: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

The present qualitative study aims to (a) better understand how palliative care nurses handle death proximity; (b) describe their subjective spiritual-existential experience; and (c) explore the potential links between death confrontation and spiritual-existential experience in nurses. Eleven palliative care nurses participated in a semi-structured interview. Data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The first level analysis allowed for a description of the emerging themes of nurses' experience of death confrontation, spiritual-existential experience, and caring attitudes. The second level analysis allowed for the emergence of a typology, identifying a higher meaning for the nurses' mechanisms of subjective regulation of death proximity, integrating death, fighting death, and suffering death. Results were interpreted within a humanist-existential perspective.