The effect of death education and experience on nursing students’ attitude towards death

Nurses face their own fear of death whenever they come to the bedside of a dying patient. This fear must be confronted and reconciled before they can help others meet death with dignity. Examining one's attitude towards death is a difficult task that needs to begin in the student years, when attitudes towards working with the dying are formed. Nurse educators recognize that brief but effective ways of promoting this kind of personal awareness need to be found. An experimental study is described that investigated the effect of death education programmes and personal experience with death on the attitudes of nursing students. It was found that the death attitudes of inexperienced students who were in an experiential programme were more positive than similar students who received a didactic or placebo programme. Experienced students, however, were negatively affected by the experiential approach. The implications of these findings for nursing education are outlined.