Graduation Year
2025
Document Type
Senior Thesis
Degree
Bachelor of Science in Nursing
Primary Major
Nursing
Thesis Advisor
Deborah Meshel, BSN, MSN
Abstract
Medical-assistance in dying (MAID) is a process in which a consenting patient self-administers lethal medications with the intent of ending their life. This process is marked with ethical, emotional, and spiritual complexities. Nurses play a key role in MAID, through providing care as well as being a patient advocate. Specifically, intensive care unit (ICU) nurses often provide care to critical or terminally ill patients. However, according to the research, little formal training or education about MAID has been put into place for ICU nurses. To investigate, primary research articles regarding healthcare professionals’ experiences with MAID, educational gaps, and current training methods were examined. A proposed quantitative quasi-experimental study will investigate if providing an educational training session for ICU nurses will increase their knowledge, confidence in addressing MAID requests, and communication skills. This experiment will include a sample of 100 ICU nurses employed at hospitals in San Francisco. The proposed study will utilize a 4 hour in-person training session with pre- and post-tests using the End-of-Life Professional Caregiver (EPCS) survey. A t-test will be conducted to analyze the differences between the pre-test and post-test scores. If the p-value is <0.05, the results will be statistically significant, thus supporting the hypothesis that providing a comprehensive training program to nurses increases their MAID’ knowledge, confidence in addressing MAID requests, and communication skills.