Death exposure, death attitude, death anxiety and burnout in nurses

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This research constituted a pilot study to begin to investigate the experiences of South African nursingprofessionals who work with dying patients, within an existential-phenomenological theoretical paradigm.The specific purposes were to describe the profile of the sample with regard to the variables of deathexposure, death attitude, death anxiety and burnout, to establish whether these variables were related, andwhether the groups differed with regard to those variables. The sample (N=114) consisted of three groupsof nurses. The first group included hospice nurses, who work in high mortality-exposure, death-certainty,palliative-focus contexts. The second group consisted of private hospital intensive care (lCU) nurses, whoworked in moderately high mortality-exposure, death-possibility, curative-focus contexts. The third groupcomprised first-year university nursing students, who work in a low mortality-exposure, death-unlikely,academic-focus context. Death exposure and demographic variables were measured using a demographicquestionnaire designed by the researcher. Death attitude, according to existentialist theory, was measuredby the Death Attitude Profile - Revised Version (D AP). Death anxiety was measured using theMultidimensional Fear of Death Scale (MFODS), and burnout was measured with the Maslach BurnoutInventory (MBI). Statistical analyses of the data (namely calculation of descriptive statistics, correlationmatrices and multiple analyses of variance) were performed using the computer package Statistica. Theresults showed that numerous aspects of death exposure, death attitude, death fear and burnout are related.In general, the findings indicated positive correlations between death exposure, reduced death anxiety,improved attitude and reduced experiences of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. TheMANOVAs demonstrated that the three groups do not differ significantly with regard to private deathexposure or death attitude, but significant differences were found with regard to professional deathexposure, death anxiety and burnout. Hospice nurses had experienced the most patient deaths, followedby ICU nurses and then students. Hospice nurses showed significantly less death anxiety than the nursingstudents. Hospice nurses were also significantly less emotionally exhausted than students, and lessdepersonalized than ICU nurses as wen as nursing students. The findings suggest that death exposure, incombination with cognitive and emotional resolution of existential anxiety, mitigates against excessivedeath anxiety, and burnout due to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, when working with thedying.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University