From Death anxiety to death awareness: An exploration of the lived experience of Iranian hospitalized patients in critical care units who witnessed unsuccessful cardiopulmonary resuscitation

Introduction: This study was conducted to explore the lived experience of hospitalized patientsin critical care units (CCUs) who witnessed an unsuccessful resuscitation. Methods: The participants in this interpretive phenomenology study were ten hospitalized patients in CCUs selected through purposive sampling. The data were collected through unstructured interviews and analyzed using van Manen's approach. Results: Two main themeswere identified along with the subthemes including (1) deathanxiety (perception of the shadow of death, thinking about mourning and sympathize thinking about death); and (2) death awareness (mindmeditation self-discourse, spiritual-religious dialectic with God, and avoiding the consequences of thinking about death). Conclusion: Witnessingan unsuccessful resuscitation acted as a boundary situation and stressor for the fellow patients and led to mortality salience as well as the experience of death anxiety.Understanding how patients manage and reduce this death anxiety is necessary in order to provide appropriate clinical support during medical decision-making.