Attitudes of Jordanian Nursing Students toward Death

Abstract

Background: Although death is significantly increasing and most death cases take place in hospitals. However, nursing students are not well prepared to care for patients who are near death.
Aim: This study aims to assess the attitudes of Jordanian nursing students towards death in addition to examine the relationship between nursing students’ attitudes towards death and their selected characteristics.

Design: A quantitative descriptive cross-sectional research design was used.

Method: 551 nursing students from two universities in Jordan participated, Death Attitude Profile–Revised (DAP-R) tool and a demographic questionnaire that was developed by the researcher, which included (type of university, age, studying year, attending educational courses and attending death situation) were used.

Results: Jordanian nursing students most reported attitude was neutral acceptance, additionally type of university using independent t test showed a correlation with escape acceptance with p value = 0.02, using ANOVA test for both age and studying year showed that age had a correlation with death avoidance and escape acceptance with p value = 0.03, 0.004 respectively, studying year had a correlation with fear of death, death avoidance and escape acceptance with  p value = 0.02, 0.001,0.01 respectively and attending death had a correlation with death avoidance with p value = 0.011. However, attending educational courses was analyzed using t test and the result revealed no correlation with any of the death attitude dimension.

Conclusion: The attitudes nursing students have towards death affect how they care for dying and end of life patients, these findings demonstrate the importance of understanding students stress when they deal with death, furthermore emphasize the importance of integrating palliative educational courses into nursing curriculum.