BACKGROUND: Terminal @entity548 is a rare but devastating event that may occur in certain advanced @entity5 . The focus of management involves administration of 'crisis medicine' with the intention of relieving @entity1 distress through sedative doses of anxiolytics or opioids. This practice, whilst widely accepted, is based on limited evidence and has never been formally evaluated. AIM: To evaluate the utility of crisis medication in the management of terminal @entity548 , through the experiences of nurses who had personally managed such events. METHOD: Semi-structured interviews exploring the experiences of palliative care and head and neck oncology nurses were recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Saturation of themes occurred after interviewing 11 nurses with cumulative experience of managing 37 terminal @entity548 . RESULTS: @entity1 reported crisis medication to have little, if any, role in the management of terminal @entity548 , which was such a rapid event that @entity1 died before it could be administered. As many events had not been predicted, anticipatory prescribing of crisis medication did not always occur. Staying with and supporting the @entity1 , and using dark-coloured towels to camouflage blood were reported to be of more practical use. A focus on accessing crisis medicines had often been to the detriment of these simple yet beneficial measures. CONCLUSION: Anticipatory prescribing of crisis medication rarely benefits the @entity1 and may unintentionally detract from nursing care. Guidelines on the management of terminal @entity548 should reconsider the emphasis on crisis medication and focus on non-pharmacological approaches to this invariably fatal event.

The use of crisis medication in the management of terminal XXXX due to incurable @entity5 : a qualitative study.

@entity5 :: ('MESH:D009369', 'Disease') :: ['cancers'] @entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['patients', 'patient', 'Participants'] @entity548 :: ('MESH:D006470', 'Disease') :: ['haemorrhage', 'haemorrhages']
@entity548 :: (MESH:D006470,Disease) :: ['haemorrhage']
