title: Negotiating futility, managing emotions: nursing the transition to palliative care.
abstract: Nurses play a pivotal role in caring for patients during the transition from life-prolonging care to palliative care. This is an area of nursing prone to emotional difficulty, interpersonal complexity, and interprofessional conflict. It is situated within complex social dynamics, including those related to establishing and accepting futility and reconciling the desire to maintain hope. Here, drawing on interviews with 20 Australian nurses, we unpack their accounts of nursing the transition to palliative care, focusing on the purpose of nursing at the point of transition; accounts of communication and strategies for representing palliative care; emotional engagement and burden; and key interprofessional challenges. We argue that in caring for patients approaching the end of life, nurses occupy precarious interpersonal and interprofessional spaces that involve a negotiated order around sentimental work, providing them with both capital (privileged access) and burden (emotional suffering) within their day-to-day work.
authors.affiliation: University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia a.broom@uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Broom
authors.affiliation: University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Emma
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kirby
authors.affiliation: St Vincent's Hospital, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Phillip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Good
authors.affiliation: St Vincent's Hospital, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wootton
authors.affiliation: Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Patsy
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Yates
authors.affiliation: Mater Hospital, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hardy
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D003142:Communication; D004644:Emotions; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D009726:Nurses / Q000523:psychology*; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000523:psychology*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D036301:Qualitative Research; D013727:Terminal Care / Q000523:psychology*; D000069341:Transitional Care
keywords: emotions / emotion work; end-of-life issues; interviews, semistructured; nursing; palliative care