Caring is an intrinsic part of the nursing profession; more specifically, in the field of palliative care, the nursing professional plays a fundamental role in improving the quality of life of patients with advanced and terminal illness. Ensuring quality requires deep reflection by professionals on the values, knowledge, attitudes, and norms which guide them towards the conceptualization of the internal good

Care is the essence of the nursing profession and takes full meaning in the field of palliative care. Palliative nursing acquires an important role in the relationship with the patient and/or family and accompaniment in suffering. Analysing whether there is quality or not in the nursing care provided to the patient with terminal illness and his family, helps to build continuous improvement and professional excellence. The aim of our study is to carry out a theoretical review on the quality of nursing care in the field of palliative care. For this purpose, we worked with the databases Academic Search Complet, PsycInfo, CINAHL, CUIDEN and MEDLINE. The results indicate that the quality of nursing care seems to be a poorly researched field, and that the instruments of measurement evaluate the perceived quality from patient satisfaction, only in the hospital setting. There is a broad consensus on the essential dimensions for assessing the quality of palliative care, but no scales have been found that specifically measure the quality of nursing palliative care. Quality is therefore evaluated through advanced nursing competencies and nursing professional values in palliative care.

Aims and Objectives:To analyse the dimensions of quality of palliative nursing care and to explore the perceptions of professionals for the development and validation of the Palliative Nursing Care Quality Scale. Background:The study of palliative nursing care quality has been approached from analysis of the competencies of palliative care nurses, based on various theoretical models. However, there are fewer qualitative empirical studies that have evaluated what good palliative nursing care is and what its dimensions are.Design: Mixed-method, Delphi approach and exploratory qualitative study. Methods: Consensus by a panel of experts using the Delphi technique and semistructured interviews. The study was reported in a comprehensive manner following COREQ criteria. Data collection took place between January and June 2018. Results: The eight-person expert panel reached consensus on the following dimensions of the Palliative Nursing Care Quality Scale: control and relief of symptoms, family and/or primary caregiver, therapeutic relationship, spiritual support and continuity of care. Thematic analysis of ten interviews identified four emergent themes related to good nursing care: (1) the patient and family as a whole; (2) finding meaning; (3) responsible communication; and (4) caring for the human element. Conclusions: The quality of palliative nursing care goes beyond providing comprehensive care; it means meticulously looking after every detail of what is important to the patient. The expectations of professionals are not as important. Instead, care should be based primarily on the needs and respect for the wishes of the patient and their family.Relevance to Clinical Practice: Specifying the quality of nursing care in routine practice and reaching a consensus on its dimensions means moving towards excellence in care, as well as improving the professional profile of advanced practice palliative care nurses.

Background There is increasing concern regarding the quality of palliative nursing care. However, despite the growing number of studies identifying related variables, there is still a paucity of studies analyzing models of how these variables interrelate. Objective The study aimed to identify the role played in the quality of palliative care of nursing professionals by the variables meaning and death anxiety and to investigate the mediating role of psychological well-being and engagement. Method 176 palliative nursing professionals participated, selected by non-probabilistic convenience sampling using the snowball method. A simple mediation analysis and a multiple mediator model were performed in parallel, and data were collected using a paper and online questionnaire between January and May 2018. Results Well-being mediated the impact of meaning (indirect effect = 0.096, SE = 0.044, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.028, 0.213) and death anxiety (indirect effect = −0.032, SE = 0.013, 95% CI: −0.064, −0.010) on the quality of care. Engagement, on the other hand, only mediated the impact of meaning (indirect effect = 0.185, SE = 0.085, 95% CI: 0.035, 0.372), while the indirect effect of death anxiety with the quality of care through engagement was not statistically significant (indirect effect = 0.008, SE = 0.009, 95% CI: −0.004, 0.032). Significance of results Death anxiety is not directly related to the quality of care, but rather has an effect through psychological well-being, a variable acting as a mediator between the two. The effect of meaning on the quality of care is explained by the mediation of both engagement and psychological well-being, and its impact on the quality of care is thereby mediated by more variables than death anxiety.

No abstract