SHBC1065

H.M.LIEW¹, C. U. UBEYNARAYANA¹, G. F. CHIN¹

Khoo Teck Puat Hospital¹

Dealing with the patient’s death was viewed a challenging encounter in clinical practice. Nurses’ attitude in coping has impact on supporting dying patients and their family members, and the quality of care would be affected. However, there are various factors that can affect nurses’ attitudes. This study aimed identify the level of nurses’ attitude, to examine any relationships between their attitudes and nursing characteristics in coping with death and managing patient’s death.

Convenience sample adopted to recruit nurses working in inpatient ward between (N=392, with 80% statistical power). Nurses’s attitude towards caring for dying patients and death were measured using FATCOD and DAPR respectively. Bivariate and multivariate approaches were adopted for data analysis.

Older nurses, nurses with more years of working experience and nurses that attended EOL related courses (Median:110 vs 106; p=<0.05) had positive attitude towards caring of dying patients. Registered Nurses had more positive attitude than Enrolled Nurses  (p< 0.05). Furthermore, negative correlation was observed among nurses with greater exposure to dying patients and attitude towards death. (r,-0.17; p<0.05)

Older, experienced nurses have more life experience and a deeper understanding of life. Therefore, facing their own aging, they are have better understanding the needs of dying patients, can communicate better with them and their families. In consistent with other studies, palliative care training has positive impact on nurses attitudes towards caring of dying patient. Inverse association between caring of dying patient and attitudes towards death could be due to nurses’ orientation to fear of death and death education.