PROFESSIONAL NURSE ATTITUDE to WARDS THE deat h OF PATIENTS

Abstract

The purpose of this correlated descriptive study was to assess attitudes of nursing professionals towards the death of patients, related to conditional factors and preparation instances in this area. The sample was made up of 157 professional
nurses from Guillermo Grant Benavente Hospital in Concepción, and Las Higueras Hospital inTalcahuano. This study was supported by attitude and death concepts. To collect information, an instrument with 3 scales of measurement was used. The first scale used to measure biosocial demographic points, was taken from Tejada, and adapted by the researchers (1). The second scale, used to measure attitude toward death, was created by Urrutia, mentioned in Tejada (1). The third scale, the Questionnaire of Attitude toward Death (CAM), was Templer´s adaptation (2). Principal results show that age, undergraduate preparation in the subject, age at first contact with death and years of professional experience, have influence in nursing professionals’ attitude toward the death of patients. This permits creating an optimal statistic model of predictable factors in the nursing professional’s attitude toward the death of patients. It concludes that it is very important that there is an adequate physical space in hospitals for the attention of dying patients, as well as instances of psycho-emotional support for professionals that frequently face the death of patients. It is also very relevant to get better undergraduate preparation during professional development, to reaffirm a positive attitude, that will be demonstrated in better attention, and decrease of fears and anxiety.