Study on Nurses’ Death Attitudes and Caring for Terminally Ill Patients

Abstract

This is a cross-sectional descriptive study aimed to investigate the attitudes of nurses toward death and caring for their terminally ill patients. It explored the relationship of the following variables to nurses’ attitudes towards death and caring for terminally ill patients: sex, age and length of service and the nurses’ coping styles in caring for terminally-ill patients. The study made use of a Likert 35-item questionnaire and in-depth interviews. There were 85 registered nurses who participated in this study. The respondents came from Manila Doctors’ Hospital, Medical Center Paranaque and San Juan De Dios Hospital. They were selected through quota sampling. To know to which items the respondents reacted most positively and to which most negatively, the mean per response per item was computed. One-sample t-test was performed in order to determine the significant differences among nurses’ attitudes in caring for terminally ill patients according to their sex, age and length of service The study showed that the respondents have neutral attitudes towards death and caring for terminally-ill patients. There was no significant difference between male and female respondents in their attitudes towards death and caring for terminally ill patients. Similar results were found when the responses of nurses who had been working for less than 30 months and the nurses who had been serving for 30 months and above were compared. On the other hand, there was a significant difference between the responses of the nurses aged 30 and above and nurses below 30 years old towards death and caring for terminally ill patients. Nurses aged 30 and above have responses that showed positive attitudes toward death and caring for terminally ill patients. It was found that prominent coping skills of nurses are distancing oneself and debriefing.