Attitudes of Registered Nurses toward Death in a General Hospital

Abstract

Nurses' attitudes toward death and dying are of increasing interest as management of dying patients becomes a focus of concern. A death anxiety questionnaire tapping six conceptually distinct aspects of attitudes toward death was developed from work of previous investigators and administered along with other measures to 188 hospital nurses. This sample proved not to express very much anxiety about death; older nurses especially were found to express less anxiety about death of others and more acceptance of conventional medical procedures for managing the dying patient. No aspect of death anxiety was related to death rate on the unit on which the nurse worked, to any of several personality variables, or to peer rating of death anxiety. Finally, the psychometric properties of the death anxiety questionnaire, along with other findings, suggest need for more attention to measurement problems, heretofore largely ignored.