The effects of death education on nurses' attitudes toward caring for terminally ill persons and their families

Abstract

This study sought to determine the effectiveness of an education program on nurses' attitudes toward caring for terminally ill persons and their family members. The program, based on the hospice concept of care, included a didactic section based on Kubler-Ross' stages of death and dying, and a role-play model designed by the researcher. Data were collected from 34 licensed nurses, aged 18 to 65, practicing in the midwestern United States. The Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying Scale (FATCOD) was designed by the researcher to assess nurses' attitudes. The FATCOD was found to be a valid and reliable tool. All nurses completed the tool before and after the education program (pre-test, post-test). Compared by a t-test, the scores for the nurses were significantly higher after participation in the educational program. The t-value was found to be 2.97, significant at the less than 0.01 level, 2-tailed probability = 0.006. These findings support the hypothesis that nurses have a more positive attitude toward caring for terminally ill persons and their family members after participation in the program, than the same nurses had before participating in the program. Demographic information including age, years of experience in nursing, highest degree held, basic type of nursing preparation and previous education on death and dying were analyzed to determine their relationship to the nurses' attitudes. The only information which demonstrated any significant relationship to the nurses' attitudes was that of previous education on death and dying. These were computed by an analysis of variance (ANOVA) F = 3.22, F prob = 0.04, significant at less than 0.05 level.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Confirmatory factor analysis of the Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying Scale (FATCOD–B) among Italian medical students

“…We found, from the CFA results, that, the FATCOD-B does not measure a single latent dimension, despite the original intention of the scale developer (Frommelt, 1991;.…”

“…Several interesting proposals have been put forward in the literature (Braun et most of these proposals address the issue from a teaching perspective, rather than a learning perspective and focus on the assessment of the acquisition of interpersonal and communicative skills, while seemingly overlooking the student's process of personal growth and attitude development. Due to this position, only a few assessment tools have been developed to assess attitudes toward death and dying (Frommelt 1991;Neimeyer, 1994;Merrill et al, 1998), and their application in research has been rather limited. Focusing on the relationship with the dying patient during care, rather than on death and dying as general concepts, the Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying Scale Form-B (FATCOD-B) (Frommelt, 1991; appears to be a useful instrument for end-of-life care education because it provides information about the behavior of the health professionals in clinical practice.…”

“…Due to this position, only a few assessment tools have been developed to assess attitudes toward death and dying (Frommelt 1991;Neimeyer, 1994;Merrill et al, 1998), and their application in research has been rather limited. Focusing on the relationship with the dying patient during care, rather than on death and dying as general concepts, the Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying Scale Form-B (FATCOD-B) (Frommelt, 1991; appears to be a useful instrument for end-of-life care education because it provides information about the behavior of the health professionals in clinical practice. The original version of the scale, named FATCOD, had been developed for nurses (Frommelt, 1991); subsequently, the FATCOD was slightly modified in FATCOD-B to be administered to students coming from different programs of study (Frommelt, 2003 Leombruni et al, 2014a).…”

“…Focusing on the relationship with the dying patient during care, rather than on death and dying as general concepts, the Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying Scale Form-B (FATCOD-B) (Frommelt, 1991; appears to be a useful instrument for end-of-life care education because it provides information about the behavior of the health professionals in clinical practice. The original version of the scale, named FATCOD, had been developed for nurses (Frommelt, 1991); subsequently, the FATCOD was slightly modified in FATCOD-B to be administered to students coming from different programs of study (Frommelt, 2003 Leombruni et al, 2014a). All of these studies come from nursing education research and, despite its potential for use in medical education, the FATCOD-B scale has rarely been administered to medical students (Leombruni et al, 2012;2014b).…”

Training Intervention for Health Care Staff in the Provision of Existential Support to Patients With Cancer: A Randomized, Controlled Study

“…Its reliability and validity have been tested and it consists of 30 assertions, 15 with negative wording and 15 with positive wording. Each assertion is graded on a five-point Likert scale (26). After negatively worded items are reversed, all items were summated, forming a scale ranging from 30 to 150, where 150 is a very positive attitude towards caring for dying patients and 30 is a very negative attitude.…”