To examine sensory burden as a potential limit to otherwise beneficial integrative nursing care in adults with advanced illness and to develop a conceptual basis for coordinating touch, sound, light and bedside activity without imposing universal sensory thresholds. Patients with advanced illness may simultaneously experience fatigue, disturbed sleep, pain, psychological distress and changing preferences for interaction. Nursing care, family presence and supportive nonpharmacological interventions can be beneficial, yet each may also contribute sensory input. Existing literature commonly considers noise, light, touch or individual interventions separately, leaving the combined experiential consequences of overlapping bedside activity insufficiently conceptualised. Original non-empirical conceptual framework developed through critical integration of nursing, palliative-care, oncology, environmental and supportive-care scholarship. Peer-reviewed literature published from 2017–2024 was selected for direct or conceptually relevant evidence concerning sensory environments, fatigue, sleep, patient preferences, touch-related care, nonpharmacological nursing interventions, multidimensional assessment and bedside workflow. Sensory burden is proposed as a patient-specific and temporally variable state arising when multimodal environmental and care-related stimulation exceeds what a person can comfortably integrate at a particular point in illness. The concept distinguishes sensory burden from stimulus intensity alone and from the assumption that lower stimulation is always preferable. Coordinated nursing care therefore requires attention to cumulative exposure, the purposes of individual care activities, changing patient tolerance and competing clinical or relational requirements. Sensory coordination may extend person-centred palliative nursing by making the timing and concurrence of otherwise legitimate bedside activities visible as a clinical consideration. Empirical validation is required before the framework can support measurement thresholds or standardised intervention protocols.
