HOSPICE PATIENTS AND NURSES PERCEPTIONS OF SELF-CARE DEFICITS BASED ON SYMPTOM EXPERIENCE

Although the relief and/or control of physically, emotionally, and spi ritually distressing symptoms are the hallmarks of hospice care, accur ate assessment of the individual's unique and often rapidly changing s ymptom experience is lacking. The purpose of this descriptive, correla tional study was to assess and quantify hospice patients' perceptions of their symptom experiences and those of the hospice nurse assessing them. A convenience sample of 53 hospice patients (32 males, 21 female s), with a mean age of 69 years, from a large midwestern home-based ho spice completed the Adapted Symptom Distress Scale Form 2 (ASDS-2) at admission, and at 2 and 4 weeks after admission. The Hospice Admission Intake was completed at admission. Individual hospice nurses complete d the ASDS-2 within 24 hours of their hands-on assessment, in addition to the demographic characteristics profile. Findings indicated an imp rovement in symptom experience, distress, and occurrence scores from a dmission to week 2, and in the symptom experience and distress scores from admission to week 4. Hospice nurses tended to give higher symptom experience scores than the patients gave to themselves. These finding s demonstrate the importance of obtaining information about symptom ex perience fr om the patient as well as the nurse.