The lived experience of female student nurses when encountering patient death for the first time (nursing education)

The purpose of this study was to uncover the lived experience of female student nurses encountering patient death for the first time. Five students chose to participate after attending informational sessions provided by the researcher at their baccalaureate schools of nursing within New York State. Each student was asked to "Describe the situation in which you encountered your first patient death. Share your thoughts and feelings until you have no more to say about the situation."

Giorgi’s (1975) qualitative method of data analysis was used to construct a specific situated structural description of each participant which illuminated the lived experience. The five specific situated descriptions were synthesized into a general structure description which described the lived experience of encountering patient death for the first time for all of the nursing students.

Four major themes evolved from the data. Theme 1, witnessing death through the eyes of a novice, described the uniqueness of the new experience for the students. Subthemes of helplessness and being afraid emerged from the novices’ descriptions. The second time, experiencing the transformation of life to death, identified an overwhelming sense of awe which all of the students experienced at the moment of death. Sadness, the third theme, was described by each student, however two different types of sadness were identified. Some students were saddened by the patient’s death while other students felt sad because they did not know enough about the patient as a person prior to his/her death. The fourth theme, integration patient death into the realm of professional practice, illuminated how each student reflected on the experience, evaluated personal beliefs and reconstructed her view of nursing to incorporate patient death.

The study’s implications for nursing include proposed changes in nursing education related to death and dying within the classroom and clinical settings, nursing student perceptorship by staff nurses and the initiation of institutional support programs for students and staff. Recommendations for further study include the evaluation of death education modalities, additional research to understand the patient death phenomenon and the provision of support services for nursing students when encountering patient death for the first time.