Abstract

This baseline study aims to explore Hospice at Home nurse's experiences and well-being while caring for palliative and dying patients. The study will utilise a qualitative method to collect data with the purpose of understanding the Hospice at Home nurse's experience of work and the stressors encountered. The nurses will be interviewed using semistructured interviews, and the data will be analysed and categorised into themes using a grounded theory methodology. The participants will be a purposive sample of trained Hospice at Home nurses who spend the majority of the day providing direct hands on care to patients and their families in the community. Studies suggest that factors to promote resilience and well-being, in hospice nurses can be developed through staff training packages to help prevent burnout. The literature evaluates studies of hospice nurses and stress levels when working in a hospice but very few studies focus on community hospice nurses who are often working alone without the support of a collegiate team in close proximity. This study aims to provide valuable additional data to this little-researched area. The study will report early in 2012 and will inform Hospice At Home nursing teams as to whether coping strategy training would be beneficial for the well-being of the staff, which in turn could result in preventing absence due to sickness, promote staff retention and contribute towards team building.