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Hospice nurses tell their stories about a good death: The value of storytelling as a qualitative health research method
Bev Taylor
Professor, School of Nursing and Health Care Practices, Southern Cross University, Lismore, Queensland
Abstract
Death is inevitable for all human life and when the diagnosis of terminal illness is proclaimed, it creates a firm sense of finality in a person's mind. Domiciliary hospice nurses work in community homes, caring for dying people, as they make their life-death transitions. As 'skilled companions' (Campbell, 1984), hospice nurses are respectfully party to the changing fortunes of the terminally ill person and his or her family. By virtue of their close interpersonal connections with people during their death processes, experienced hospice nurses gather strong perceptions of what constitutes a good death of the people in their care. Like many other people, nurses have the potential to be good storytellers, who need only to be encouraged to share their stories, to reveal their personal and work-related knowledge.
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