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Abstract

To measure hospice employees’ perceptions of their own death, the Revised Death Anxiety Scale (RDAS) was implemented among 128 employees at a Midwest hospice facility. Participants were asked to indicate their age, gender, position, and length of time employed in a hospice. Results indicated a negative correlation between RDAS scores and length of time employed in a hospice for “non-nurses” (p = .011). Overall, RDAS scores were extremely low when compared with a recent study that implemented the RDAS in a group of hospice nurses (Halliday & Boughton, 2008). Research of this nature should continue because a better understanding of how hospice employees experience their own mortality will allow hospices to better serve patients and patients’ friends and families.

Keywords

death anxiety fear of death hospice employees palliative care death and dying

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Death Anxiety in Hospice Employees

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