ABSTRACT
The nurses shared their beliefs about nursing and about life and death in semistructured personal interviews and impromptu conversations. This chapter explores the beliefs and behaviors of the nurses of Four South. Nurses spoke about their philosophies of nursing. Philosophies of nursing were related to hospice nursing in various ways. Most nurses on Four South verbalized a holistic philosophy of nursing, a philosophy of caring for the “whole being.” Spiritual care, however, was more difficult for them to define and, when defined, was initially associated with religion. Initially, it appeared that meeting patients’ spiritual needs was not perceived by the nurses to be a nursing function. Some of the nurses incorporated the idea of God and heaven in their philosophies of life and death. Nursing the dying means facing death on a day-to-day basis in a society where death is shunned. A good death is whatever the particular patient wants and needs.
