Medpedia Podcast. Apps Newsletter Abo-Shop. Springer Medizin. Suche Suchbegriffe eingeben Suchen. BMC Nursing. Abstract Background Patient deaths are impactful events for professional caregivers in both their professional and personal lives. The present study aims to explore how both subjective and objective patient death experiences are related to various aspects of professional quality of life ProQOL among physicians and nurses. Methods S econdary analyses of cross-sectional data were conducted, and Chinese physicians and nurses whose most recent patient death experience was more than one month prior were included.
Objective and subjective patient death experiences were measured based on the number of past patient deaths and the Accumulated Global Changes AGC subscale of the Professional Bereavement Scale, respectively. Regressions were run following bivariate analyses. Results The number of past patient deaths was not significantly linked with any of the three ProQOL scores in either the bivariate analyses or regressions.
The more professional caregivers think that they have been changed by all past patient deaths in their career, the more they experience burnout and secondary traumatic stress, but, the more satisfied they are with their job and the helping itself. Background Patient deaths are impactful events for professional caregivers, and they influence both their professional and personal lives [ 1 , 2 ]. Shortly after a patient death approximately one week , bereavement reactions such as grief, frustration, and death anxiety manifest among professional caregivers [ 4 , 5 ].
However, patient death experiences may also contribute to positive outcomes. Among Korean nurses, nursing assistants, social workers, and care workers, the psychological suffering that they experienced after patient deaths was found to be positively linked to posttraumatic growth [ 10 ].
Increasing attention has been given to ProQOL among healthcare professionals who frequently experience patient deaths. In emergency department nurses, low to average levels of compassion fatigue and BO and average to high levels of CS were detected [ 13 ]. For instance, delivering death notifications was associated with increased BO rates among American emergency medical service professionals [ 14 ].
