The role of the nurse in the process of dying and in spiritual care in the jesenice general hospital

Abstract

In their working process, the nurses have the opportunity to enact their knowledge, empathy and human relations also in the process of the treatment of dying patients. In the frames of the holistic treatment of the dying, a patient’s individual persuasion and his or her religious conviction should be taken into account. The question of the nurse’s role in the process of dying is still open. In the frames of the research which took place in the General Hospital at Jesenice, 103 nurses participated. The data were gathered by means of an inquiry in March 2005. In the research work, the vertical dimension of religiosity was stressed which is related to the religious meaning of life and manifests itself in a patient as the need for spiritual care carried out by a hospital priest. The research revealed that nurses are confronted with death and dying, that patients’ religious needs are cared for in the hospital chapel, while at the same time exposed the need for a more qualitative care for the dying. Taking into account the spiritual dimension, holistic nursing care of the dying could have been more efficient, and the patients should have been treated considering all their dimensions. In the frames of the research, propositions and possible ways of making nurses more recognizable in the dying process.