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Table 2 Nurse reported relative’s spiritual needs

From: An investigation into the spiritual needs of neuro-oncology patients from a nurse perspective

Relative spiritual needs

Illustrative examples from the nurse questionnaire data

End of life decisions

(1) ‘I feel they [the family] felt I was not exploring other options i.e. – not writing a living will. Although they expressed they would support her decision I felt they didn’t really want her not to be ventilated again.’

Feeling of being lost and unbalanced

(2) ‘The wife of one man…. she had spoken to several doctors, and in fact any new face she encountered, asking the same questions and receiving the same answers again and again. As yet another new face she repeated her questions to me. The other friends and relatives with her appeared embarrassed for her. To me she looked lost and totally unbalanced. The answers she was receiving was not what she actually wanted to know or hear’

(3) ‘At this point I didn’t realise that this poor woman had spiritual needs’