The Relationship Between Thanatophobia Levels and Attitudes Towards Caregiver Roles Among Nurses in the COVID-19 Period

Abstract

The current study aimed to determine the relationship between fear of death and their caregiver roles in nurses during the COVID-19. The research data were collected with the personal information form, the Thanatophobia scale, the Scale of Nurses’ Attitudes to Their Caregiver Roles (SNACR), the Google Questionnaire Form. Of the nurses participating in the study, 16.1% were diagnosed with COVID-19. The current study found statistically significant differences among the thanatophobia mean scores of the groups composed according to the variables; age, gender, marital status, job position, voluntarily choosing the profession, satisfaction with the department, having had a COVID-19 diagnosis, personal assessments about their own COVID-19 knowledge, and evaluating the COVID-19 disease as fatal. In addition, there were statistically significant differences among the SNACR mean scores of the groups according to their evaluations about gender, income level, working experience as a nurse, being diagnosed with COVID-19, and their COVID-19 knowledge. The current study found no correlation between the nurses' Thanatophobia scale score and SNACR score.

Examination of the relationship between thanatophobia and resilience levels of nurses working in intensive care and palliative care units

“…Studies show that nurses experience thanatophobia and have moderate or high levels of thanatophobia. The results of this study were similar to other studies [11,20,24].…”

“…The Thanatophobia Scale mean score of nurses was found to be above the medium level at 31.74 ± 10.08 in this study. There are studies examining the thanatophobia levels of nurses and reported moderate to high levels [11,[20][21][22]. In a qualitative study by De Swardt and Fouche (2017), it was determined that nurses who gave post-mortem care to the deceased in the intensive care unit experienced thanatophobia by confronting the reality of their own death [23].…”

Examination of the Relationship Between Thanatophobia and Resilience Levels of Nurses Working in Intensive Care and Palliative Care Units

“…Studies show that nurses experience thanatophobia and have moderate or high levels of thanatophobia. Our results are similar to the results of studies that found moderate levels of thanatophobia [11,20,24].…”

“…The Thanatophobia Scale mean score of nurses was moderate at 31.74 ± 10.08 in this study. There have been studies in our country examining the thanatophobia levels of nurses and reported moderate to high levels [11,[20][21][22]. In a qualitative study by De Swardt and Fouche (2017), it was determined that nurses who gave post-mortem care to the deceased in the intensive care unit experienced thanatophobia by confronting the reality of their own death [23].…”

“…The scale was developed by Friborg et al and was translated into Turkish and veri ed for validity and reliability by Basim and Çetin [18,19]. It contains 33 items and 5 subdimensions, which are 'structural style' (3,9,15,21), 'perception of future' (2,8,14,20), 'family coherence' (5,11,17,23,26,32), 'perception of self' (1,7,13,19,28,31), 'social competence' (4,10,16,22,25,29) and 'social resources' (6, 12,18,24,27,30,33). If increased scores are to indicate increased resilience, the answer boxes should be rated from 1 to 5 from left to right.…”