Paper
Saturday, 22 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Creative Strategies for Nursing Education
Managing Our Vulnerability: Taiwanese Student Nurses' Lived Experience of the Death of Their Patients
Yu-Chuan Lin, RN, MN, PhD, Department of Nursing, Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan
Learning Objective #1: The learner will be able to understand Taiwanese student nurses' lived experience of facing their patients death.
Learning Objective #2: The learner will be able to understand what strategies were employed by the Taiwanese student nurses to deal with their vulnerability.
     Facing the death of a patient is a particularly emotionally demanding area for the student nurses. The effect of this impact extends far beyond the student nurses and into their nursing performance of the future clients. Little is known about what are the strategies of Taiwanese student nurses employed to manage their emotional strains while facing for the death of their patients. The purpose of this study was to document the managing strategies employed by Taiwanese student nurses facing for the death of their patients. Descriptive Phenomenology was employed in this study. Extensive face-to-face interviews and observations were conducted with 3 Senior student nurses at home. A total of 8 interviews were yielded during the multiple occasions of data collection. Thematic analysis guided by Giorgi (1985) and van Manen (1990) was used to analyze the text generated from the interviews and field notes. Releasing Our Vulnerability was the main theme emerged from the students’ accounts. The day-to-day of Releasing Our Vulnerability was best understood in the context of five sub-themes: Not Wanting to Talk, Viewing Things in Different Light, Cherishing the Learning Experiences, Seeking Support, and Doing Exercise. The meaning units of each sub-theme offered details of student nurses’ feelings, concerns, and action-oriented responses to manage their vulnerability. This study alerts nursing faculty and clinical staff that the Taiwanese student nurses employed multiple strategies to deal with their vulnerability and difficulties. It is ethically imperative to develop programs to facilitate student nurses to get through this difficult learning passage in future clinical and academic settings.

See more of Creative Strategies for Nursing Education
See more of The 17th International Nursing Research Congress Focusing on Evidence-Based Practice (19-22 July 2006)