Effect of Terminal Patient Care Training on the Nurses' Attitudes Toward Death in an Oncology Hospital in Turkey

This is an experimental research aiming at identifying the effect of terminal patient care training on the nurses' attitudes toward death. The sample of this study (n = 41) involves 20 nurses in the training group and 21 nurses in the control group. Nurses were offered terminal patient care training and their attitudes toward death were assessed before and after the intervention. The Death Attitude Profile-Revised (DAP-R) subscale mean scores for fear of death (3.9-4.6, p < .05) and approach acceptance (2.9-3.3, p < .05) were found to significantly increase at the end of training in the training group while mean scores in the control group displayed no significant change (p > .05) in any of the five DAP-R subscales. In accordance with these findings, this study suggests that terminal patient care training should be implemented in the nursing curriculum more extensively and should be frequently repeated as part of the nurses' in-service education.