Abstract
Background & Aim: Palliative care appears to be an important concept in nursing practice. A number of definitions of this concept are available in the literature. The aim of present study was to analyze the concept of palliative care to identify its attributes, antecedents and consequences in the context of nursing.
Material & Methods: Rodgers' evolutionary method of concept analysis was used to clarify the meaning of palliative care. Data bases of PubMed, CINAHL, Science direct and Google scholar were searched to retrieve the related literature. The main inclusion criteria were, the literature published in English language in the discipline of nursing. Literature search was limited to 2004-2013 with the keywords of “palliative care” and “nursing care” in the title and abstract of articles. The initial search resulted in 410 articles, 105 of them deemed relevant to our study. Then 25 articles were selected and reviewed.
Results: In this study, the attributes of palliative care were identified in two categories of end of life approach and general approach. The antecedents included necessities and facilitators, and the consequences were positive and negative outcomes.
Conclusion: The results of the study identified the concept of palliative care. The findings, also, show that palliative care is an important aspect of clinical practice in nursing.
Received: 5 Dec 2013
Accepted: 11 Feb 2014
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