



Yung-Hua Liu

Yung-Hua Liu

Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taiwan

Title: Exploring the life stories of nurses caring for patients with terminal illness


Biography: Yung-Hua Liu


The present study explored the life stories of nurses caring for patients with terminal illness. In this narrative study, five nurseswho cared for patients with terminal illness were enrolled using a semi-structured guideline for data collection. Each nurse was individually interviewed twice. The first data analysis was based on the integrated content model reported by Lieblich, Mashiach, and Zilber (2008) for analyzing all data in context. The second data analysis was conducted following the category
content model, which classifies contextualized experiences according to specific categories. The nurses were women aged 28–41years, with various religious beliefs and no chronic diseases; their family members had undergone hospitalization experiencesand had been enrolled in spirituality-related training courses; the nurses had a total average nursing experience of 12.5 years.The study identified five life themes, namely: maintaining rightness and hating evil in the true moment; wandering because of the lack of emotional bonds to homes; release from spiritual imprisonment to nirvana; a heart that contains no desire and that releases emotions as if they were water; and the enjoyment of spiritual traveling when boundaries are erased. Furthermore, the results revealed that the nurses shared their life stories with other nurses for promoting concepts of and passion for spirituality, and continued disseminating their stories and transforming their professional growth