Recently, the chances are increasing that nursing care of the dying is gradually assessed on a hospital, due to the development of life span lengthening technology by medical progress and the increase of chronic diseases. Nursing care of the dying is ...
Recently, the chances are increasing that nursing care of the dying is gradually assessed on a hospital, due to the development of life span lengthening technology by medical progress and the increase of chronic diseases. Nursing care of the dying is kind of burden with lack of preparation for it. So educational intervention is needed for effective nursing care.
The purpose of this study is to identify the effect of death education program to the nursing students on their anxiety of death and attitudes toward nursing care of the dying. Subjects were 36 nursing students of the G university in J city, experimental group 20 and control group 16.
For data collection, both groups were preliminarily tested about their general characteristics, their characteristics related to death, their anxiety of death and attitudes toward nursing care of the dying.
The program for death education used in this study was made up of the reorganization and modification of Alfons Deeken's 'How do we face death?' and articles about Death Education (Bonnie, 1989; George, 1990; Katherine & Frommelt, 1991; Linda, 1995: Barbara & Deborah, 1997; Donna, 2000) by the researcher, which consisted of researching, understanding, accepting, opening and intervening of death. The program consisted of 6 sessions (100 minutes/session) three times a week. The instruments used for this study were Collette and Lester's "Fear of Death and Dying Scale'(1969) and Frommelt's 'Attitudes toward Nursing Care of the Dying Scale'. To analyze the data, SPSS/pc+Windows(version 10.0) was used. The homogeneity of two groups which may be affected by various variables was tested by x^(2)-test.
The comparison of pre and post-test scores of Anxiety of death and attitudes toward nursing care of the dying was carried out by t-test and the comparison of test scores between two groups by paired t-test.
The results of this study were as follows.
1. The score of Anxiety of death of nursing students(range: 35-160) was 90.89 and attitudes toward nursing care of the dying 86.78 (range :30-120)
2. The first hypothesis, 'the degree of Anxiety of death of experimental group which received death education will be lower than that of control group' was supported, with experimental group 87.65, control group 94.25 (t=-.11, p<.05).
3. The second hypothesis, "the degree of attitudes toward nursing care of the dying of experimental group which received death education will be positively higher than that of control group' was supported, with experimental group 91.60, control group 84.69 (t=2.99, p<.01).
In conclusion, this study through the above results shows that the Death Education Program can be an effective nursing education program for their Nursing students to decrease their death anxiety and to prepare care of the dying.