On Nurses' Attitudes to Patients Suffering from Intractable Neurological Diseases

- Focusing on Nurses' Experiences of Patients with Intention to Stop Enteral Nutrition -

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore nurses' attitude to patients suffering from intractable neurological diseases, based on nurses' experiences. The unstructured interview data with ten nurses were analyzed through Benner's interpretive phenomenology, and five themes of "helpful", "administrative", "rational", "emotional" and "receptive" were derived as nurses’ attitude. These five attitudes often appeared when the nurses felt "strange" and "conflict" in caring the patients. From a nurse's experience with a patient of an intractable neurological disease who intended to stop enteral nutrition, it is shown that understanding patients can be achieved by perceiving the difference from the patient, not by conforming emotions and intentions of the patient.