Table 2.

Nurses' Perceptions of Key Variables in Defining Palliative Sedation (PS)

Goals of palliative sedation	“The goal is to get the patient some pain relief…A level of medication to make the patient comfortable with regard to their level of consciousness.”
	“Palliative sedation is for the terminal patient, to control symptoms, and to manage the pain, because the patient is never going to get better. Some think it's used only as an end-of-life measure, and others believe it is used during certain periods to aid in controlling pain.”
Patient eligibility/symptoms	“People who are really, truly at the end, you know, they only have a couple days left and are really in a lot of pain and suffering.”
	“…Palliative sedation is…when a patient is at a place that nearly is unmanageable, [in] intractable pain, where the family and the patient decide that bringing the patient to a level of, um, sedation would be the best thing to do, given the current situation…and that level of sedation would be more of a semiconscious place.”
Risks and concerns	“There is a fine line in comfort care; we are trying to keep the respiratory rate to certain levels as much for the family as for the patient. We want the quality of the patient's life to be assisted as well as interaction with family to continue for as long as possible.”
Difference from procedural sedation practices	“You're going to sedate the patient to a point where they are just out of pain.”
	“With PS you wake people up once in awhile, you give them a choice. Wake them up and say “how are you feeling now?” “Do you still want to continue with this?”