THE EFFECT OF AN UNDERGRADUATE NURSING COURSE IN PALLIATIVE CARE ON DEATH ANXIETY AND ATTITUDES TO CARE OF THE DYING IN NURSING STUDENTS (HOSPICE CARE).
Contributors: University of Michigan.
Published: 1985
Number of pages: 157
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: The effect of an undergraduate nursing course in palliative care on death anxiety and attitudes to care of the dying in nursing students was studied using the general theoretical orientation suggested by Quint's (1967) landmark study of how nurses learn to care for the dying. A quasi-experimental design was implemented with 3 groups: experimental (EX), which received the special course; nursing control (C1), which received an integrated approach to death education in their baccalaureate nursing program; and non-nursing control (C2), home economics students who received no death education in their university program. Students were pretested in the autumn of their third undergraduate year (the level at which the special course was placed in the curriculum), and were posttested 8 months later at the end of the academic year. Three successive cohorts were studied, yielding a total sample size of 306 (EX = 121, C1 = 102, C2 = 83). Death anxiety was measured using the Collett-Lester Death Anxiety Scale (alpha = 0.67), while attitudes to care of the dying were measured using Winget's Questionnaire for Understanding the Dying Person and his Family (alpha = 0.77).

The major analytic model for the study was analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with the pretest specified as the covariate. Reliability adjusted and pretest-posttest correlation adjusted pretest scores were also used as covariates to bracket the size of the treatment effect. Mulivariate analysis of covariance was used to test the effect of the educational program on a combined anxiety-attitude vector.

Results indicated a consistent reduction in death anxiety in EX as compared to C1 and C2 across all analyses. EX was also significantly distant from C1 and C2 on the anxiety-attitude vector. Although the results demonstrated differences between EX and both control groups on the attitudinal variable when ANCOVA was used, these differences subsequently disappeared when reliability adjusted forms of the model were implemented. The findings demonstrated that the special course reduced death anxiety, and given the theoretical model for the study, should foster approach behavior to care of the dying patient and his family.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-11, Section: B, page: 3781.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, 1985.

School code: 0127.