Introduction

The dying process has historically shifted from family and home settings to healthcare professionals and hospital settings. Caring involves attitudes, knowledge and skills that should be acquired and honed through nursing training.

Objective

To explore nursing staff attitudes who work in critical hospital departments when faced with the process of dying patients.

Materials and Methods

A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted using a non-probability convenience sampling, from which a final sample of 71 professional nurses who work in critical departments of higher-level specialty hospitals in Tabasco, Mexico was obtained. The CAM-2 Attitudes Towards Death instrument originally developed by Martin & Salovely was translated and applied.

Results

The average age of nursing professionals participating in this study were 32.5 years (SD=7), of which 71.8% were women. 67.6% of nurses had an attitude of indifference to death and only 9.9% had a positive attitude. From an attitude of fear perspective, 46.5% of the nurses expressed that thinking about death causes them anxiety, while 39.4% considered the death of patients as something natural.

Conclusions

Nursing staff feel indifferent to patient care when facing death. However, nurses believe that accepting their own death leads them to care more freely.

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