Critical care nurses' perceptions of obstacles and helpful behaviors in providing end-of-life care to dying patients.

BACKGROUND: Little is known about nurses' perceptions of obstacles or helpful behaviors ("helps") in providing end-of-life care in the intensive care setting.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the importance of various obstacles and helps in providing end-of-life care as perceived by critical care nurses.

METHODS: A questionnaire was mailed to 300 members of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses. Nurses were asked to rate obstacles and helps in giving end-of-life care, and additional obstacles and/or helps, and answer demographic questions.

RESULTS: Six of the top 10 obstacles were related to issues with patients' families that make care at the end of life more difficult, such as the family's not fully understanding the meaning of life support, not accepting the patient's poor prognosis, requesting more technical treatment than the patient wished, and being angry. Added obstacles related mostly to problems with physicians' behavior. Most helps were ways to make dying easier for patients and patients' families, such as agreement among physicians about care, dying with dignity, and families' acceptance of the prognosis. Added helps included allowing music, pets, and so forth into the patient's room.

CONCLUSIONS: Nurses have difficulties with patients' families and physicians concerning end-of-life issues, especially when the behaviors remove the nurses from caring for a patient or cause the patient pain or prolong suffering. Nurses do not acknowledge having difficulty providing care to dying patients aside from conflicts that arise because of patients' families and physicians.