Kontakt 2010, 12(3):264-271 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2010.037

Quantification of anxiety and fear of death in students of nursingNursing

Radka Bužgová

Ostravská univerzita v Ostravě, Fakulta zdravotnických studií, Ústav ošetřovatelství a porodní asistence

In nurses, the approach to and fear of death can affect their attitude to dying patients and thus, in the course of the education in nursing, it is suitable to discuss problems of the death and fear of the death. The target of the present research was to find the measure of the anxiety and fear of death in nursing students depending on the year of study, age and experience with the death of a close relative or friend. The measurements were based on the scale of anxiety and fear of death (The Revised Collet-Lester Fear of Death Scale - FODS) by Collett and Lester (1969) measuring the fear in four categories: fear of one's own death, fear of dying, fear of death of other people and of dying of other persons, with the help of a five-degree Likert scale. In the interpretation of the data, the average value within the scale of 1-5 is presented here, where 1 means no fear and 5 stands for very strong fear. The Student t-test was employed to compare the parameters examined. The research included 73 students of nursing at the FZS OU in the academic year 2009/2010. It was found that the students are most afraid of their own dying (4.04 in average). Fifty-two percent of the students expressed a very strong fear of the process of their own dying, particularly fear of restricting the self-sufficiency in dying, decrease in physical forces and slow dying. The fear of the dying process itself was smaller in students under 25 years of age (p = 0.017). The respondents exert the smallest fear of their own death (2.52 in average). In terms of the death of close persons (3.52 in average), the students were most afraid of a loss of a close human and loneliness. As to the process of dying (3.34), there was the largest fear of seeing a close human suffering from pain. The education and aimed training in the field of the death and dying in university students of health branches can reduce the anxiety and fear of the death and thus, teaching the palliative care for general nurses should include an analysis of problems of one's own death and dying and fear of the death. The scale for the quantification of the anxiety and fear of death CL-FODS could become a suitable tool for determining the efficacy of teaching and courses in this field.

Keywords: student; nursing; anxiety; fear; death

Received: July 12, 2010; Accepted: September 15, 2010; Published: October 20, 2010  Show citation