The impact of intensive care nurses' attitudes towards death on dying patient care

This study was carried out as descriptive in order to determine the impact of intensive care nurses' attitudes towards death on dying patient care. The sample of the study consisted of 80 nurses who working in the adult intensive care units of the University of Health Sciences Trabzon Kanuni Education and Research Hospital Kaşüstü Campus. The data were collected with face to face interviews technique by using the "Personal Information Form", "Death Attitude Profile-Revised (DAP-R)" and "Frommelt Attitudes Toward Care of The Dying Scale (FATCOD)". In the evalution of data were used number, percentage, mean, standard deviation, Student's t-test, one-way analysis of variance, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance, Post-Hoc analysis and Pearson correlation analysis. In the study, nurses' attitudes towards death were moderately positive by determining the intensive care nurses' DAP-R total mean score of 116.23±16.33. It was determined that nurses adopt "neutral acceptance and approach acceptance" attitude (63.88±8.71) the most, "escape acceptance" attitude (18.63±5.66) the least from the subscales of the DAP-R. Their positive attitude towards death in these subscales was moderate. It was found that gender and receiving end of life care information/training significantly affect nurses' attitudes towards death (p<0.05). Nurses' attitudes towards care of the dying were moderately positive by determining the intensive care nurses' FATCOD mean score of 100.30±9.31. It was found that education significantly affect nurses' attitudes toward care of the dying (p<0.05). It was determined that there was a weak statistically significant positive correlation between FATCOD mean score and "neutral acceptance and approach acceptance" subscales (r=0.282, p=0.011); a weak statistically significant negative correlation between FATCOD mean score and "fear of death and death avoidance" subscales (r=-0.290, p=0.009). In accordance with the results obtained from the study, the suggestions were given to increase the positive attitudes of intensive care nurses towards death and dying patient care by the researcher.