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- Title
Nurses’ perspectives on the suffering of preterm infants.
- Authors
Korhonen, Anne; Haho, Annu; Pölkki, Tarja
- Abstract
The concept of suffering is discussed among those who are cognitively aware and verbally capable to express their suffering. Due to immaturity, preterm infants’ abilities to express suffering are limited. Relieving suffering is an ethical and juridical demand of good nursing care. The purpose of this study is to describe nurses’ perceptions of the suffering of preterm infants. A descriptive qualitative approach was selected. Data were collected from essays written by nurses (n = 19) working in the neonatal intensive care unit. Inductive content analysis guided by the research question was performed. The nurses described individually determined suffering of the preterm infants according to four categories: suffering ruled by maturation, existence of suffering, individual threshold of suffering and interpreting the cues of suffering. Suffering of preterm infants is manifested by population-specific features, emphasising the need to develop sensitive interventions for relieving their suffering.
- Subjects
FINLAND; CONTENT analysis; PREMATURE infants; RESEARCH methodology; NEONATAL intensive care; NURSES' attitudes; PAIN; QUESTIONNAIRES; SUFFERING in children; WRITING; QUALITATIVE research; NEONATAL intensive care units; DESCRIPTIVE statistics
- Publication
Nursing Ethics, 2013, Vol 20, Issue 7, p798
- ISSN
0969-7330
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/0969733012475251