title: Factors influencing nurses' attitudes toward death.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Studies on nurses' attitudes to caring for terminally ill patients indicate that death and dying create fears and anxieties for health-care providers.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To identify nurses' most common attitudes toward death and the sociodemographic, professional, and training factors that significantly affect those attitudes.
  
  
  METHODS
  This was a descriptive correlational study with a sample of 360 nurses from the internal medicine, oncology, hematology, and palliative care departments of five health institutions in Lisbon (response rate 70.6% of all nurses). Data were collected using a sociodemographic and professional questionnaire (QSDE) and the Portuguese versions of the Death Attitude Profile-Revised (DAP-R) scale and the Adult Attachment Scale (AAS).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Older nurses (P<0.0001) and nurses with more work experience (P<0.0001) had higher escape acceptance. Female nurses had higher religious acceptance (P<0.0001). Medicine, oncology, and hematology nurses had significantly higher fear attitudes (P<0.01), avoidance of death attitudes (P<0.0001), and escape acceptance attitudes (P<0.0002) than palliative care nurses.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study contributes to a better understanding of the factors that underlie nurses' attitudes toward death. This may be useful for creating relevant and effective pre- and post-graduate nursing training.
authors.affiliation: Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon, Portugal.
authors.forename: Georgeana
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gama
authors.forename: Filipe
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Barbosa
authors.forename: Margarida
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vieira
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001293:Attitude to Death; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D009726:Nurses / Q000523:psychology*; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000523:psychology*; D011174:Portugal; D012044:Regression Analysis; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013727:Terminal Care / Q000523:psychology*