Abstract
Background: Natural disasters are becoming more frequent and severe and profoundly impact the end-of-life care experience, including service provision. There is a paucity of research examining healthcare workers' experiences in responding to care demands when disasters strike. This research aimed to fill this gap by exploring end-of-life care providers' perceptions of the impact of natural disasters on end-of-life care. Methods: Between Feb 2021-June 2021 ten in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with healthcare professionals providing end-of-life care during recent natural disasters, COVID-19, and/or fires and floods. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed using a hybrid inductive and deductive thematic approach. Results: The overarching theme from the healthcare workers' accounts was of being unable to provide effective compassionate and quality care - "I can't make all this work." They spoke of the considerable burdens the system imposed on them, of being overextended and overwhelmed, having their roles overturned, and losing the human element of care for those at end-of-life. Conclusion: There is urgent need to pioneer effective solutions to minimise the distress of healthcare professionals in delivering end-of-life care in disaster contexts, and to improve the experience of those dying.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 21 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | BMC Palliative Care |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023, The Author(s).
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© The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
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“I can’t make all this work.” End of life care provision in natural disasters: a qualitative study
Kelly, M., Mitchell, I., Walker, I., Mears, J. & Scholz, B., figshare, 2023
DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.c.6594529.v1, https://springernature.figshare.com/collections/_I_can_t_make_all_this_work_End_of_life_care_provision_in_natural_disasters_a_qualitative_study/6594529/1
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