The Effects of Life-and-death Education on Nursing Students' Attitude

Aim and objectives:The aim of this study was to explore the effects of life-and-death education to the nursing students.Background: Caring the death and their families is the important duty of nurses. There was few special lessons for nursing students' preparation to care the death in Chinese community, and also life meaning was scarcely discussed in the nursing curriculum. Design: Qualitative method and quantitative method were combined in the study to explore the changes of nursing students' life-and-death attitude before and after the life-and-death education.Method: In a institute of Macao, by advertisements, students enrollingin the life-and-death education wereallocated into the experimental group, and the rest students were included into the control group. Forty-five hours of life-and-death education were given to the experimental group, and the control group accepted no interventions. Scale of Life Attitudewas used quantitatively to evaluate students' life-and-death attitude before and after the intervention. Purposive sampling, one-to-one in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted qualitatively to evaluate the changes of students' life-and-death attitude after the intervention. Data from investigation were analyzed by t-test and general linear model univariate analysis. Data from interviews were analyzed by Colaizzi?s seven steps method of phenomenological enquiry.Results: There were 48 and 126 students in the experimental and control group respectively. After the life-and-death education, students in the experimental group showed more positive life-and-death attitude according to the score of Scale of Life Attitude. Data saturation was achieved after interviewing 13 students. Six themes were identified: the life-and-death education can help students ?1broaden knowledge of life and death; ?2deepen the understanding of death; ?3ignite the reflection on the meaning of life; ?4induce more positive attitude and behavior on life and death; ?5understand the limitation of the medicine and nursing; ?6develop the grief-relieve skills.Conclusion: Findings show, the life-and-death education can improve the life-and-death attitude of nursing students.