PowerPoint Presentation

[Audio] Good afternoon to all audiences in this room. My name is Chuleeporn Prompahakul, a lecturer at Prince of Songkla University, Thailand. Today, I and my research team are going to share the results of our study titled Factors Related to Caring Behaviors for Patients at the End-of-Life among Fourth-Year Nursing Students, Prince of Songkla University..

[Audio] Let's begin with why we are interested in this topic. We all know that peaceful death is the aim of providing care to end-of-life patients and their families. Caring is the art and heart of nursing care to reach that aim. Literature shows that there are several factors related to nurses' caring behaviors toward end-of-life patients. These factors could be divided into demographic factors such as age, years of work experience, level of education, and experience of the death of a family member or friend, and modifiable factors such as knowledge, attitude, confidence, relationship, environment and resources, communication, nursing activities, philosophy and culture of care, skills, and training. Self-directed learning readiness and preparedness in caring for patients at the end of life.

[Audio] The caring behaviors of nurses could lead to positive outcomes in caring for this group of patients, such as increasing patients' satisfaction. A study shows that it could alleviate the physical, psychological, and spiritual suffering of end-of-life patients, which we all expected. Although end-of-life care has been included in the nursing curriculum for more than 10 years, we found that there are only 2 hours for class lectures. In our practice, we have a limited number of end-of-life patients. Therefore, these students might not get the full experience of caring for end-of-life patients..

[Audio] Preparing caring nurses needs to begin since they are nursing students. So, we conducted this study, which aimed to examine the level of caring behaviors for patients at the end of life and its related factors among fourth-year nursing students who were studying in the last semester at the Faculty of Nursing, Prince of Songkla University..

[Audio] The conceptual framework of this study is based on the literature and Roach's 6 Cs of caring attributes. Sister Marie Simone Roach explained that caring is what distinguishes nursing from other professions. Caring is the locus of all attributes used to describe nursing. To illustrate the concreteness of the concept and make it more practical, she defined caring into six attributes: compassion, competence, confidence, conscience, commitment, and comportment. These are known as the 6 Cs" of caring attributes. In the literature, we found four factors strongly positively associated with the caring behaviors of nurses: knowledge in end-of-life care, attitudes toward death and dying, self-directed learning readiness, and preparedness by the institution in caring for patients at the end of life. We hypothesized that all four variables would be positively associated with the caring behaviors of student nurses..

[Audio] We conducted this correlational study in the year of 2020. We used 6 questionnaires to correct data in 207of the 4th year student nurses and we get a hundred percentage responses from the participants..

[Audio] This study was approved by the Institutional Review Boards at Thammasat University and consented to collect data from the Faculty of Nursing, Prince of Songkla University..

[Audio] The majority of the participants in this study are female with the average age of 22 years old. Eighty percentage of them never had experience in caring of end of life person in their families. Half of them had experience is caring of end of life or dying patient in the practicum course for one case..

[Audio] The results show that student nurses' caring behaviors are in moderate level in total and in all sub-dimensions with the highest mean in competence dimension..

[Audio] Although the results of this study demonstrated the same direction as the study by Matchim and Thongthawee in 2019, when we look at the item analysis, we found that the top 3 behaviors that showed the highest mean score were intending to provide the best care to the dying patient and their families even though they are at the end of their lives, honoring and respecting the dying patient as a person even if the patient will be in a state that cannot be recognized, and willingly listening to my dying patients and their families..

[Audio] This could be explained by the course learning outcomes of the practicum courses in Adult Nursing II that clearly identify the outcomes about holistic nursing care and ethical issues awareness in caring for adult clients with critical illness, emergency illness, and end-of-life and dying. The students are taught through various active learning strategies in a real-life situation. They are required to have at least one end-of-life patient in their care..

[Audio] Although the students have real experience caring for an end-of-life patient, they still perceived that they didn't respond to the needs of dying patients and their relatives immediately upon request and did not provide opportunities for dying patients and their relatives to express their feelings. These two behaviors showed the lowest score among the 40 behaviors. This result is similar to the study by Abelsson and Willman, which found that nursing students did not dare to talk to their relatives dying patients because they were not confident that their words would add to their grief over the loss of relatives or not, therefore often asking for help from a nurse when faced with such a situation. In addition, in clinical practice, they worked under a supervisor's license; therefore, they must consult their supervisor before providing interventions to the patients..

[Audio] Self-directed learning readiness and preparedness by the institution for caring for patients at the end of life were two factors that demonstrated a significant positive correlation with caring behaviors. This result is similar to the study by Yang and Jiang that studied 519 Chinese student nurses. We can see that knowledge and attitude are not significantly correlated with caring behaviors. All nursing institutions teach students to view all patients as equal and treat them in an equal manner. Therefore, participants might perceive that having only knowledge or a positive attitude but not being able to provide care to the patient is worthless..

[Audio] The findings of this study may not generalize to other nursing students or students of other institutions because, in the year after this study was conducted, there was a pandemic. Therefore, teaching and learning strategies were changed according to the situation..

[Audio] Adding active learning strategies or interventions to enhance self-directed learning readiness. Nursing institutions play an important role in preparing students to become caring nurses who embed caring behaviors for patients at the end of life. Hospitals should support these people in order to enhance their caring behaviors, e.g., through workshops, seminars, and conferences. Would be recommendations according to the results of this study..

References. FACULTY OF NURSING Prince of Songkla University.

FACULTY OF NURSING Prince of Songkla University. abstract.

Faculty of Nursing Prince of Songkla University.