THE EFFECTS OF INSTRUCTION IN DEATH AND DYING ON THE DEATH ANXIETY LEVEL OF NURSES AND THEIR ATTITUDES TOWARD DEATH AND DYING PATIENTS.
Contributors: Temple University.
Published: 1986
Number of pages: 163
Subjects: Education, Health.; Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: This study explores nurses' death anxiety and their attitudes toward death and dying. It also investigates the possibility of whether instruction in the theory of death and dying has any effect on these variables.

The participants in the study were 173 nurses, from the general hospitals in the state of Delaware, who work in Intensive Care Units, Coronary Care Units, and Emergency Rooms. Templer's Death Anxiety Scale and Hopping's Death Attitude Indicator were the instruments used. The nurses were all tested one time.

"Statpac" was the computer program used to analyze the data. Pearson r correlation coefficient was the statistical test used. Death anxiety was compared to death attitudes, type of program attended, length of experience in nursing and death experience for all the nurses. Death attitudes was then compared to each of the above variables. The nurses were then divided into two groups according to the amount of instruction in death and dying they had acquired. The above tests were then repeated for each of the groups.

The findings from this study indicate that death anxiety and type of nursing program attended have little relationship to nurses' attitudes toward death and dying patients. Experience seemed to be the variable that had the most significant effect on nurses' death attitudes. Those nurses who had more experience in nursing had positive attitudes toward death and dying patients but the nurses who had been with many patients at the time of their death had the most positive death attitudes. Those nurses who had more than eight classroom hours of death education and had been with many people at the time of their death had the most positive death attitudes.

These data support the theory that instruction in death and dying may improve nurses' attitudes toward death and dying patients. They also indicate that death experience may have some influence on death attitudes.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-09, Section: A, page: 3322.

Thesis (ED.D.)--TEMPLE UNIVERSITY, 1986.

School code: 0225.