Sacred moments: the human-to-human encounter between palliative care nurses and people who are dying

Abstract

"Sacred Moments" - the essence of the human-to-human encounter between palliative care nurses and dying people are important and intimate moments in our nursing practice, yet these experiences / stories are largely untold in the field of palliative care. These practice wisdoms are essential for nurturing and healing of the soul and for the spiritual growth of both the dying person and the nurse. This research was undertaken in order to seek a way of acknowledging and understanding the lived experience of sacred moments of caring, experienced by palliative care nurses. The existing palliative care texts imply sacredness is important and in recent years have contained chapters on spirituality from the patient and to a lesser extent, the family perspective. This research provides an understanding of these sacred moments from the palliative care nurse's perspective. Using a phenomenological methodology informed by van Manen and Heidegger, this research incorporates unstructured audio taped interviews with six palliative care nurses and a reflection on my own clinical practice. The outcome of the research unravels the experience of these nurses and how they describe the sacred moments experienced in palliative care nursing. Each narrative in its own right is a paradigmatic case with strong patterns of meaning. The themes from the narratives include sacredness as difference, intuition, connection, environment, love, intimacy, support, reflection and aesthetics. They hold rich descriptive information necessary for understanding each nurse's actions, interventions, interpretations and the deeper understandings that emerge from the nurses' narrative. This research will be of interest to nurses involved in palliative or end-of-life care and the nursing research community highlighting a need to tell our stories and use them to learn and reflect upon the essence of human-to-human connectedness. By doing so we give voice to the less articulated yet important aspects of our practice.