Nurses' perspectives on the discharge of cancer patients with palliative care needs from a gastroenterology ward.

BACKGROUND

People with cancer usually like to spend as much time as possible at home rather than in the hospital. Nurses have a pivotal role when patients are discharged to a unit in hospital or from hospital to the community health-care system.

AIM

To explore how frontline surgical nurses assess patients with gastrointestinal cancer receiving palliative care and the implications of their assessment and competency for the patients' discharge destinations.

METHODS

A descriptive exploratory approach was used involving focus group interviews with a purposive sample of ten nurses from an inpatient gastroenterology surgical ward at a university hospital in Norway. Transcriptions of the interviews were analysed using Kvale and Brinkman's thematic approach.

RESULTS

Two overall themes emerged that had implications for the nurses' recommendations for optimal patient follow-up care after discharge: 'the complexity of and fluctuations in the patients' health status' and 'considering the competency of the nurses at the discharge destinations'.

CONCLUSIONS

This study illustrates surgical nurses' perspectives on the discharge destinations of cancer patients receiving palliative care. The findings have implications for initiatives aimed at providing more home-based palliative care.