Purpose: To explore how nurses experienced catastrophic upper gastrointestinal bleeding in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients.
Methods: A qualitative descriptive method was used. Data were collected by semi- structured interviews. Twenty-one registered nurses who had taken care of HCC patients with catastrophic upper gastrointestinal bleeding were purposely recruited from the Department of Hepatobiliary Cancer, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital located in mainland China.
Results: Four themes explicated from the study were: feelings expressed during the process of rescuing the lives of patients, feelings expressed from succeeding or failing to save the lives of patients, feelings expressed from family members response to nurses' actions, the impact of the experience on the personal life, work and philosophy of life of the nurse subjects.
Conclusions: The findings of this study indicate that it is necessary for nursing leaders to take effective measures to improve nurses' nursing skills, to provide more education in care of the dying, to offer nurses services that address their psychosocial health and to provide them with emotional support.
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