Paper
Thursday, 20 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Caregiver and Home Health Issues
Transforming Care: Influence of Reflective Learning on Holistic Evidence-Based Palliative Symptom Care
Doris M. Howell, PhD, RN, Allyson Clarke, RN, MN, Laura Brooks, RN, MN, Maria Lippa, RN, MN, and Alison Riddell, RN, MN. Nursing, University Health Network, Ontario, ON, Canada
Learning Objective #1: Discuss the influence of reflective learning on nurses’ provision of holistic palliative symptom care.
Learning Objective #2: Understand the role of participatory action based research in developing practice knowledge.
Evidence-based practice is increasingly being emphasized as a means to improve health care quality. Evidence-based knowledge must be combined with other ways of nurse knowing to deliver holistic patient-centered care that can positively transform the patient and family illness experience. Reflective learning offers a method to integrate theoretical and research knowledge and other ways of nurse knowing into transformative nursing practice. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a study that was conducted to understand the influence of reflective learning on nurses’ experience in the provision of holistic and evidence-based symptom palliative symptom. The specific aims of the study were to: explore the nurse’s perception of the influence of reflective learning on their provision of holistic symptom care and its impact on patient symptom experience and to examine the enablers and barriers to holistic nursing practice.  This qualitative study combined grounded theory methods with a participatory action-based research approach to learn about nurses’ experience while simultaneously effecting a change in practice. Multiple sources of data including interviews, participant observation, focus groups and journaling were used to obtain an in-depth understanding of the phenomena. Nurses in an acute palliative care unit were invited to participate in the study (N=8) and the reflective action-based learning process. Constant comparative methods appropriate for grounded theory studies were used to analyze the data. The results of the study will be presented and the theory that emerged from the analysis of the data. Implications for nursing practice and research will be highlighted.

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