Determining death anxiety among health school students

Abstract

Aim: The descriptive study has been done in order to determination thoughts, feelings and death anxiety in health school students.

Methods: The descriptive study has been done in order to determination death anxiety in students. This study includes 330 students attending Pamukkale University Denizli School of Health. Sample is comprised of 244 students who accepted to enrolled in the study between 01^st-31^th of May, 2009. Data have been collected with using a questionnaire and “Thorson-Powell Death Anxiety Scale”, T-Test, One-Way ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U-Tests.

Results: Average age of students who enrolled in the study was 21.44 ± 2.11. 65.6% of the students were girls, 26.6% were in 3^rd class, 28.3% were seeing death as “ceasing to exist/ending”, 35.2% were feeling pain/sadness/anxiety when facing death. 63.1% had cared a dying patient, 17.2% felt sadness when they died, 23.0% continued caring in order to cope with death when they did, 43.9% didn’t felt himself enough when caring, 58.2% didn’t wan’t to take care of a dying patient, 63.9% didn’t have enough training at school in order to take care of a dying patient. There were significant relationship between death anxiety point average and students’ age groups, gender, attending class, perception of death, feelings/thoughts about death, feelings during care and wish to again take care of dying patient (p<0.05). In conclusion, male students, attending 3^rd class, admitting to have felt helpless and feeling nothing while caring, students feeling adequate, willing to take care of another dying patient were found to have higher death anxiety.

As a result of the study approached patients and their families with death while talking to students in addition to, the granting of student consulting services and topics with discussion of concrete cases has been proposed.