¿A qué se atribuye que los enfermos oncológicos de una unidad de cuidados paliativos mueran en paz?

Abstract

Introduction: Nowadays, the advance of science and technology are facilitating that life expectancy keeps increasing continuously. This means that population ages on a daily basis and death can be delayed even more. All these facts contribute significantly to the increase and prevalence of degenerative diseases, and therefore, the growth of potential new sources of suffering. Already in 1997 The USA Institute of Medicine (IOM) denounced the risk to the unsuitable application of technologies that increase life expectancy and the under-valuation of the alleviation of the suffering. In our country, 120.000 people suffer terminal diseases and are facing an imminent death. Few studies in Spain have explored how these patients die. Within this context, this study examines the qualities of a peaceful death in patients who have suffered from a cancer and are in an outpost- terminal situation. Objective: The aim of the present exploratory study is to answer to the question: What factors contribute to the fact that the patients of a palliative care unit die peacefully?. The research tries to identify and to describe the factors that contribute to a peaceful death not only from the perception of the nursing team involved in the patient’s care but also from their main caregivers’ point of view. Method: 25 self answered questionnaires distributed among the main caregivers and 25 questionnaires distributed among the nursing team who cared for those 25 patients with far advanced cancer disease that died in the Palliative Care Unit at the Hospital Duran y Reynals de L’ Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona) have been analyzed and used as research evidence. Results: 72% of the nursing team and 64% of the main caregivers were completely or close to total agreement that patients had died peacefully. However, while the nursing team tended to focus on somatic aspects such as good control of symptoms (69.5%) to conclude that patients had died peacefully, main caregivers attributed the peaceful death to psycho- social factors (81.8%).