RESUMEN
PURPOSE: The purpose of this inquiry is to explore how adult patients with limiting directives, their families, and clinicians make decisions about resuscitative status during anesthesia. Although current practice guidelines recommend mandatory reconsideration of do not resuscitate and other limiting directives before anesthesia, the automatic suspension of directives limiting care continues in the adult perianesthesia setting. How patients and clinicians talk about these limiting directives is underexplored in the literature. DESIGN: This qualitative inquiry used the Foucauldian Poststructural Case Study Design. METHODS: Data were collected through interviews and observation of patients with existing advance directives who underwent surgery, family members, and perianesthesia clinicians who participated in their care. Contextualizing analysis, a qualitative methodology that fits well with Foucauldian Poststructural Case Study Design, was used to rigorously examine the data. FINDINGS: Twenty-seven participants completed the observation and interview components of the study. Observation data were collected from an additional 18 participants. Four authoritative discourses that constructed choices available to patients and clinicians were identified. The "We'll just suspend" discourse permeates perianesthesia culture and produces a will to suspend the limiting directive among clinicians. Discourses about lack of time, a desire not to talk about advance directives unless it is essential to care, and confusion about who is responsible for addressing the limiting directive were also identified in the case. In addition, patients had difficulty translating advance directive choices into the perianesthesia context, and this difficulty may be misunderstood by clinicians as agreement with the plan of care. Finally, power networks may sequester knowledge about patients' choices, leading to tension among clinicians and creating barriers to honoring patients' advance directive choices. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that even where policies of mandatory advance directive reconsideration exist, patients may experience environments that constrain their choices and decision-making agency.
RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: Ethical conflict and subsequent nurse moral distress and burnout are common in the intensive care unit. There is a gap in our understanding of nurses' perceptions of how organizational resources support them in addressing ethical conflict in the intensive care unit. RESEARCH QUESTION/OBJECTIVES/METHODS: The aim of this qualitative, descriptive study was to explore how nurses experience ethical conflict and use organizational resources to support them as they address ethical conflict in their practice. PARTICIPANTS AND RESEARCH CONTEXT: Responses to two open-ended questions were collected from critical care nurses working in five intensive care units at a large, academic medical center in the Midwestern region of the United States. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the organization where the study took place. FINDINGS: Three main interwoven themes emerged: nurses perceive (1) intensive care unit culture, practices, and organizational priorities contribute to patient suffering; (2) nurses are marginalized during ethical conflict in the intensive care unit; and (3) organizational resources have the potential to reduce nurse moral distress. Nurses identified ethics education, interprofessional dialogue, and greater involvement of nurses as important strategies to improve the management of ethical conflict. DISCUSSION: Ethical conflict related to healthcare system challenges is intrinsic in the daily practice of critical care nurses. Nurses want to be engaged in discussions about their perspectives on ethical conflict and play an active role in addressing ethical conflict in their practice. Organizational resources that support nurses are vital to the resolution of ethical conflict. CONCLUSION: These findings can inform the development of interventions that aim to proactively and comprehensively address ethical conflict in the intensive care unit to reduce nurse moral distress and improve the delivery of patient and family care.