Determining the intensive care unit nurses' attitudes and behaviours to the care of end of life and their ideas about good DEATH

Providing quality care and treatment to patients who have reached the end of life in intensive care units is a challenging process for nurses. The attitudes and behaviors developed by nurses towards end-of-life care closely affect this process. The primary goal of end-of-life care is to ensure a good death can occur. Based on this aim, this cross-sectional and descriptive study was conducted to determine the attitudes and behaviors of nurses working in intensive care units, where patients entering the death process are frequent, towards end-of-life care and their views on good death. The universe of the research, which was conducted in Trabzon between March and October 2022, consists of 204 nurses working in the intensive care units of four hospitals, three of which are state hospitals and one is a university hospital. Considering the number found with the formula of "Specific Sampling of the Universe" for the sample in the study, 136 people were reached who were on leave, on a report or because they did not want to participate in the research. Nurse Information Form, Intensive Care Nurses' Attitudes and Behaviors towards End-of-Life Care Scale and Well-Being Scale were used as data collection tools. IBM SPSS V23 was used in the analysis of the data. As a result, a positive and moderate relationship was found between the scores of the attitude and behavior scale about end-of-life care and the good death scale scores of the intensive care nurses. (r=0.425; p<0.001). Keywords: Intensive Care, End of Life Care, Attitude, Behavior, Intensive Care Nurse, Good Death