Faculty of Health Sciences
Schoolof Nursing Thearpeutic Sciences
0210998w
0842097202 / In order for caregivers to be better able to work with dying patients, they need to confront
their fears about their own mortality and explore their feelings about their personal and
professional losses. The importance of death anxiety research rests on the premise that
death is an eventuality that everyone faces and how health professionals, specifically,
deal with death anxiety is of considerable relevance as to the quality of care given to the
terminally ill patient.
The purpose of this study was to identify, explore and describe nurses’ personal fear of
death (death anxiety) and explore whether an association exists between death anxiety
and their attitudes towards dying patients in a private acute care hospital in Johannesburg.
A quantitative, descriptive correlational survey was conducted to examine the
relationship between death anxiety and nurses’ attitudes toward terminally ill patients in a
private acute care hospital in the province of Gauteng in South Africa.
Various extraneous variables have been identified and defined. No attempt was made to
control or manipulate the situation as it was currently occurring. The study population
comprised of all nurses working in this hospital who fulfilled the stipulated selection
criteria. Data were obtained from nurses through the use of a self-administered
questionnaire. The response rate was 42% of the expected population. A total of 93
responses were received. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze data and the
significance of the relationships between variables was determined using the Fishers
exact test (p-value of 0.05).
The findings of this study were consistent to that of similar studies. Findings suggest high
levels of death anxiety within the study population with correlating negative death
attitudes. This may be associated with the fact that a significant proportion of the study
sample was younger and less experienced as opposed to those who demonstrated lower
levels of death anxiety and positive death attitudes and were more experienced and older.
v
A strong association was found between death anxiety and death attitudes. Statistically
significant relationships between age and length of nursing experience/exposure were
found. No significant relationships between sex, institutional support, death anxiety and
death attitudes were found. Of import, the need for ongoing terminal care education was
identified in this study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/1626 |
| Date | 10 November 2006 |
| Creators | Govender, Mogavani |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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