Sensing loneliness - nurses' experiences with providing existential care to older patients with acquired deafblindness

Introduction: Existential care is an essential part of holistic care and is officially embedded in the profession of nursing and Norwegian law. However, nurses feel insecure about meeting the patients’ existential needs. Due to the loss of the two most important senses for perceiving the world, namely hearing and sight, patients with acquired deafblindness are exposed to existential challenges. Within the population of persons with acquired deafblindness, older patients are a fast-increasing group. Additionally, existential needs become more urgent in older age. Thus, nurses are challenged to provide existential care to these patients. Aim: The aim of this study is to explore nurses’ lived experiences with providing existential care to older patients with aquired deafblindness. Method: The study has a qualitative design with a phenomenological hermeneutical approach. Individual open narrative interviews were conducted with six registered nurses. The transcribed interviews were analyzed using Lindseth and Norberg’s analysis method for researching lived experience based on Ricoeur’s interpretation theory. Findings: Existential care occurs during patient encounters, which the nurses experience as strongly emotional. The nurses connect to the patients and sense their loneliness. They build bridges for the patients by supporting them to participate in everyday life and to maintain their relation to God through being with them in the act of praying. Conclusion and clinical implications: Reciprocal relations between the nurses and the patients appear as crucial to provide existential care. Being moved by the patients’ loneliness activates the nurses to support them in living their lives more independently. An open discourse about existential care to older patients with acquired deafblindness within the nursing team could help lift this topic from a private secret practice to a collective responsibility. Keywords: being moved, deafblind, dual sensory loss, elderly, lived experience, phenomenological hermeneutics, spiritual care