Nursing Student’s Attitude toward Care for the Dying

Abstract

Dying and death are experiences that are painful for the ones experiencing it and their loved ones caring for them.  Nurses are frequently exposed to the care of death and dying patients. This experience often gives rise to their level of anxiety and undesired attitudes that reflect on the quality of care they give to the patients.   It is a challenge for nurses to care for dying patients and this has raised a special interest in the recent years.  This descriptive-comparative study was conducted to determine the attitude of student nurses towards the care for the dying, with an adapted instrument from the Frommelt Attitude toward Care of the Dying (FATCOD) with the reliability score of .81. The respondents who participated in this study were 98 nursing students, where the majority was female (75%). Convenience sampling method was used to gather the data.  Findings of this study showed a mean of 4.16, indicating that majority of the nursing students has a positive attitude towards care for dying patients. There are no significant differences in the nursing students’ attitudes when exposure to dying patients is considered (p = 0.99).  This indicated that whether they are exposed to the dying patient or not, they all have positive attitude in taking care of the terminally ill patient. It is important for the school to keep such positive attitude of the students and prepare them in taking care of dying patients.