BackgroundBeing with dying people is an integral part of nursing, yet many nurses feel unprepared to accompany people through the process of dying, reporting a lack of skills in psychosocial and spiritual care, resulting in high levels of moral distress, grief and burnout. The aim of this study is to describe the meaning of hospice nurses’ lived experience with alleviating dying patients’ spiritual and existential suffering.MethodsThis is a qualitative study.Hospice nurses were interviewed individually and asked to narrate about their experiences with giving spiritual and existential care to terminally ill hospice patients. Data analysis was conducted using phenomenological hermeneutical method.ResultsThe key spiritual and existential care themes identified, were sensing existential and spiritual distress, tuning inn and opening up, sensing the atmosphere in the room, being moved and touched, and consoling through silence, conversation and religious consolation.ConclusionsConsoling existential and spiritual distress is a deeply personal and relational practice. Nurses have a potential to alleviate existential and spiritual suffering through consoling presence. By connecting deeply with patients and their families, nurses have the possibility to affirm the patients’ strength and facilitate their courage to live a meaningful life and die a dignified death.

BackgroundA majority of people in Western Europe and the USA die in hospitals. Spiritual and existential care is seen to be an integral component of holistic, compassionate and comprehensive palliative care. Yet, several studies show that many nurses are anxious and uncertain about engaging in spiritual and existential care for the dying. The aim of this study is to describe nurses’ experiences with spiritual and existential care for dying patients in a general hospital.MethodsIndividual narrative interviews were conducted with nurses in a medical and oncological ward. Data were analyzed using a phenomenological hermeneutical method.ResultsThe nurses felt that it was challenging to uncover dying patients’ spiritual and existential suffering, because it usually emerged as elusive entanglements of physical, emotional, relational, spiritual and existential pain. The nurses’ spiritual and existential care interventions were aimed at facilitating a peaceful and harmonious death. The nurses strove to help patients accept dying, settle practical affairs and achieve reconciliation with their past, their loved ones and with God. The nurses experienced that they had been able to convey consolation when they had managed to help patients to find peace and reconciliation in the final stages of dying. This was experienced as rewarding and fulfilling. The nurses experienced that it was emotionally challenging to be unable to relieve dying patients’ spiritual and existential anguish, because it activated feelings of professional helplessness and shortcomings.ConclusionsAlthough spiritual and existential suffering at the end of life cannot be totally alleviated, nurses may ease some of the existential and spiritual loneliness of dying by standing with their patients in their suffering. Further research (qualitative as well as quantitative) is needed to uncover how nurses provide spiritual and existential care for dying patients in everyday practice. Such research is an important and valuable knowledge supplement to theoretical studies in this field.