Currently, worldwide economic, social, and health conditions change rapidly. Also, there is a problem related to important health system in Thailand. There is continuing growth in the number of older adults, patients with chronic diseases, and cancer patients. Based on the National Cancer Institute of Thailand, 130,000 new cancer cases are found yearly. 39.96% of these cases were people aged 60 and over. In addition, cancer was the number one cause of death: there were 107.
Most Thai registered nurses who provide end-of-life care emphasize the physical dimension of care rather than spiritual care. There is a need to explore the experiences of Thai nurses who provide spiritual care. The purpose of the study was to explore the experiences of Thai palliative care nurses providing spiritual care for older adults at the end of life. A descriptive qualitative research design was used. The 8 participants were Thai nurses with experience of palliative care in hospitals in the central, northeastern, northern, and southern regions of Thailand. A focus group discussion was used for data collection. Content analysis was used to analyze data. Five themes were as follows: (1) spiritual care was searching for meaning in patients' lives, (2) spiritual self-preparation of nurses for making sense and connecting to patients' spirituality, (3) caring for patients' spiritual needs by recognizing psychological and religious beliefs, (4) facilitating ways to ease patients' suffering, and (5) assuring confidence of patients and relatives for receiving the best care. These findings that should be included in training registered nurses are honoring the patients' lives, addressing spiritual needs to decrease patients' suffering, and enhancing patients' perceptions of care through spiritual self-preparation and spiritual concern of nurses.
Purpose Thai terminal ill cancer patients have spiritual distress and need spiritual care. They are in need of palliative care in the long term to alleviate suffering, achieve good spirituality, and to be ready to face with terminal ill conditions. This study aimed to investigate spiritual needs and compare differences in spiritual needs. Methods A quantitative design was used for data collection and data analysis. The participants were Thai terminal ill cancer patients from Thai seven hospitals in northern, northeast, central, and southern regions; 322 participants were purposively selected. Instruments used was a spiritual needs scale. The instrument’s validity was validated by 17 experts, a Delphi technique was performed, the Cronbach’s alpha of 0.89 was found. Statistical analysis was F-test for one-way analysis of variance. Results The overall spiritual needs of terminal ill cancer patients were at the moderate level. The highest mean was found in the ‘prepare for death’ dimension, followed by ‘have meaning, values, and life purposes’ and ‘have opportunity to pursue most important things in life’ dimensions consecutively and had different spiritual needs among status, number of family members, living with family, and spiritual anchor at the statistical significance level of .05. Conclusion: The study results provide insight into spiritual needs of terminal ill cancer patients. That assists in improving the provision of holistic care to let the patients be happy at end-of-life phase.
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