The role of nurses in communication with patients and their families: an analysis of a palliative-care hotline experience

This article explores the communicative role of nurses in palliative care based on the analysis of calls to a palliative-care hotline in 2024. The study aimed to identify the most common requests from patients and relatives and to develop practical recommendations for nursing staff. Calls were classified into informational (67.1 %), legal (14.1%), medical (12.2%), pain-management (10.1%) and psychological (6.3%) categories. The material was processed using thematic analysis, content analysis and semantic clustering. The results indicate that patients primarily require pain control, emotional support and clear prognostic information, whereas relatives need navigation through the palliative-care system, legal clarifications and anxiety reduction. Major communication barriers include aggression, time constraints and a lack of clear distribution of responsibilities among healthcare professionals. Recommended strategies for nurses comprise emotional containment and normalization, psychoeducation, crisis-plan development, and enhanced skills in legal matters and informing patients and families about palliative care. The findings highlight the importance of developing nurses’ communicative and psychological competencies to improve the quality of palliative care.