Nurses death anxiety, attitudes and influencing factors about the care of dying patient

The purpose of this study is to determine nurses‟ death anxiety, the attitudes towards caring for dying patients and influencing factors. Planned as crossed sectional, the study was carried at Aydın Adnan Menderes University Research and Application Hospital. The area of research is composed of 499 nurses who work in intensive care units and clinic units, the sample of it includes 218 people counted by sample strategy and 327 nurses with 1.5 figure effect. The approvals for this research was received from Ethic Committee and the participants. Survey data was collected by utilizing Personal Into Form, Thorson-Powell Death Anxiety Scale (TPÖKÖ) and Frommelt Scale of Attitudes Towards Caring for Dying Person (FATCOD). The data were entered entered to computer environment by SPSS statistics packet program (Version 21, Chicago IL, USA). For the analyse of data, descriptive statistics, student-t test, one way anova, kruskal wallis tests were used. The results were evaluated in %95 confidence interval and sense p<0.05 level. The nurses‟ avarage of age is 26.24±6.35. Most of the nurses are female, single and bachelor. It is understood that the nurses feelings during the care of dying patients change, according to %45 the age and hospitalization duration and %34.6 sadness, despair. It was found out that after the patient the nurses cared died, they feel %54.7 sorrow, %21.9 despair and %7.2 failure. The findings that nurses point average of death anxiety is 56.60±17.27 indirates higher than death anxiety according to the researches held. The average of nurses Frommelt attitude scale for the care of dying patient was found as 103.14±11.53 this indicates that they exhibit less positive attitude to the dying patient than the other works. They carry out it was found that as the nurses grow older, they have less death anxiety (r=-0.12, p=0.02). The average point of death anxiety of nurses working at intensive care units is higher than the ones who work at clinic units (t=2.09, p=0.03). The average point of death anxiety of nurses who think about their own death is higher than the ones who think about it often (F=4.36, p=0.01). It was found that the average point of death anxiety of nurses who didn‟t lose someone so close is higher than the ones who didn‟t (t=2.62, p=0.009). Besides the average point of death anxiety of nurses expressing their anger during the care of dying patient is higher than the ones who have the other feelings (χ2=16.43, p=0.006). It was found that the nurses who lived in the village longest during the care of dying patient (F=3.40, p=0.03), inexperienced ones (F=2.65, p=0.04), facing death from time to time at the unit they work (F=3.86, p=0.02) exhibit less positive attitude. It was found that nurses having higher death anxiety exhibit more positive attitude (r=0.13, p=0.01). It was determined that in order to deal with the mourning of the patient having death during their own care, %48.3 of the nurses use the way of accepting death as a natural cycle, relaxing while %27.2 are praying. This work showed that nurses care for dying patient increases their death anxiety. Moreover, it indicates that nurses having high death anxiety exhibit more positive attitude during the care of dying patient. According to the results obtained the trainings on raising awareness of decrease the nurses‟ own death anxiety and positive or negative attitudes which they exhibit during the care of dying patient and improvement of methods used to deal with death. Keywords: Nursing, Death, Death Anxiety, Caring For Dying Patient