Nurse's experiences regarding truth telling: a phenomenological study

Truth telling is relaying the appropriate information to patients so that they can make informed decisions about their care and treatment. Truth encompasses all aspects of personal health. Due to inadequacy of research on the subject, the present study was conducted aiming to examine the phenomenology of truth telling based on nurses’ experiences.A phenomenological qualitative approach was used in the year 2011-12 in a teaching hospital in Tehran. A sample of nurses was chosen based on the purposeful sampling method. Sample size was dependent on the data saturation with a total of 14 participants at the end. Data gathering was done using deep interviews, and the data was later analyzed through Celasi method.Findings based on the nurses’ experiences of truth telling were extracted in 12 sub concepts and two main themes of reinforcing factors and obstacles to truth telling. According to these findings, nurses need to be informed of the patients’ conditions and be familiar with the appropriate methods and techniques for communication and transmission of bad news to patients in order to provide the best care, and this contributes to improvement of the performance of nurses.