Nursing students’ experiences of caring for dying patients during their internship : A descriptive literature review

Background: Clinical practice is an inseparable part of nursing education. Research showed that nursing students were under great pressure to care for dying patients and their families during clinical practice. Therefore, it is of great importance to provide professional hospice nursing support and guidance for nursing students.Aim: To describe nursing students’ experiences of caring for dying patients during their internship.Methods: Our research question was “How did nursing students describe their experiences of caring for dying patients during the internship?” We included qualitative research on nursing students’ experiences of caring for terminally ill patients in clinical practice. Databases PubMed and CINAHAL were used to retrieve 10 articles from 8 countries, as well, the qualitative data coding and qualitative content analysis were used to analyze the data.Results: Based on the results of the survey of “nursing students’ experiences in nursing terminal patients in clinical practice”, we divided them into five categories in a chronological order. The first part was the influence of previous relevant nursing experiences that was brought to the nursing students, the second was the emotions and feelings from nursing students in the process of nursing, the third was the relevant nursing measures mentioned by nursing students, the fourth was the way they coped with difficulties and the support they received by the nursing students, and finally the things they had learned and been inspired through these experiences.Conclusion: In clinical practice, it could be extremely stressful for nursing students to care for dying patients. Pre-practice schools should provide complete and full-fledged end-of-life education training to assist nursing students better adapt themselves to the role of nurses in clinical practice.Keywords: nursing students；dying patients；nursing experiences；clinical practice