‘no Second Chance’ – Junior Neonatal Nurses Experiences Of Caring For An Infant At The End-of-life And Their Family

‘no Second Chance’ – Junior Neonatal Nurses Experiences Of Caring For An Infant At The End-of-life And Their Family

Nurse Sharon; Price Jayne

10.1016/j.jnn.2016.04.008

Journal Of Neonatal Nursing

2017

Anxieties; End-of-life; Infants; Junior Nurses; Neonatal Unit (nnu)

Death of an infant is acutely stressful for parents and professionals. Little is known about junior nurses' experiences providing end-of-life care in Neonatal units (NNU). This study aimed to better understand junior nurses' experiences providing end-of-life care in NNU. Neonatal nurses (n = 12) with less than 3 years experience participated in a focus group. Nominal Group Technique (NGT) was used to build consensus around the challenges faced, alongside suggested developments in improving future care provision. Primary analysis involved successive rounds of ranking and decision-making whilst secondary analysis involved thematic analysis. All issues, whether environmental, professional or social appeared driven by an awareness on the part of nurses, that there was no ‘second chance’ which created a huge pressure to ‘get if right’ for the infants and families. Regarding future care 2 areas of improvement identified were ‘Education and Training’ and Support. This paper unpacks these findings making recommendations for practice.

Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).

June 2017 List