Nurses' Death Anxiety, Comfort Level During Communication With Patients and Families Regarding Death, and Exposure to Communication Education: A Quantitative Study
Abstract
In Brief The first purpose of this study was to determine if a nurse's death anxiety is related to the comfort level of the nurse during communication with patients and families regarding death. The second purpose was to explore whether nurses reported having been exposed to communication education regarding dealing with difficult subjects such as death and whether this exposure was related to comfort level of the nurse during communication with patients and families regarding death. Findings of this study benefit nurse educators and nurses involved in staff development because the results indicate that comfort level of the nurse during communication with patients and families is adversely affected by an increase in the nurse's own death anxiety, and positively affected by exposure to communication education. Thus, these results indicate a need for education in this area. The next step is to identify the most effective type, objectives, and content of this type of education. The authors present results from a study that indicate that comfort level of the nurse during communication with patients and families is adversely affected by an increase in the nurse's own death anxiety and positively affected by exposure to communication education.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Programs such as BREATHE, which address grief and coping with caring for dying patients, can both reduce this stress and improve overall care of terminal and critically ill patients.
“Programs such as BREATHE which aim to address this issue and provide exercises on grieving and coping with the demands of caring for dying patients can serve to both minimize this stress and improve overall care of terminal and critically ill patients (Peters et al., 2013; Deffner & Bell 2005).”
From Reducing nurses' stress: A randomized controlled trial of a web-based stress management program for nurses (2016) · cites this paper as Deffner & Bell 2005
Cites
The construction and validation of a death anxiety scale
Templer, D. I. (1970) · The Journal of General Psychology · doi:10.1080/00221309.1970.9920634 · Cited by 1,421 · see citing works
Caring for dying children: nurses' experiences.
Davies, B. I., Clarke, D., Connaughty, S. M., et al. (1997) · PubMed · Cited by 97 · see citing works
Saunderson, E., Ridsdale, L., & Jewell, D. (1999) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.319.7205.293 · Cited by 66 · see citing works
The Relationship of Death Anxiety with Age and Psychosocial Maturity
Rasmussen, C. A., & Brems, C. (1996) · The Journal of Psychology · doi:10.1080/00223980.1996.9914996 · Cited by 65 · see citing works
Participation of Nurses in Decision Making for Seriously III Adults
Kennard, M. J., Speroff, T., Puopolo, A. L., et al. (1996) · Clinical Nursing Research · doi:10.1177/105477389600500207 · Cited by 41 · see citing works
Richardson, V., Berman, S., & Piwowarski, M. (1983) · The Journal of General Psychology · doi:10.1080/00221309.1983.10736081 · Cited by 25 · see citing works
Landau, R. L., & Gustafson, J. M. (1997) · Perspectives in biology and medicine · doi:10.1353/pbm.1997.0019 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
How death anxiety impacts nurses’ caring for patients at the end of life: a review of literature
Peters, L., Cant, R., Payne, S., O’Connor, M., McDermott, F., Hood, K., Morphet, J., & Shimoinaba, K. (2013) · The Open Nursing Journal · doi:10.2174/1874434601307010014 · Cited by 348 · see citing works
Hersch, R. K., Cook, R. F., Deitz, D. K., Kaplan, S., Hughes, D., Friesen, M. A., & Vezina, M. (2016) · Applied Nursing Research · doi:10.1016/j.apnr.2016.04.003 · Cited by 159 · see citing works
“Programs such as BREATHE which aim to address this issue and provide exercises on grieving and coping with the demands of caring for dying patients can serve to both minimize this stress and improve overall care of terminal and critically ill patients (Peters et al., 2013; Deffner & Bell 2005).”
BackgroundPeters, L., Cant, R., Payne, S., O’Connor, M., McDermott, F., Hood, K., Morphet, J., & Shimoinaba, K. (2013) · Australasian Emergency Nursing Journal · doi:10.1016/j.aenj.2013.08.001 · Cited by 78 · see citing works
- Authors
- Deffner, J. M., & Bell, S. K.
- Affiliations
- Banner - University Medical Center Phoenix (US)
- Venue
- Journal for Nurses in Staff Development (JNSD)
- Published
- 2005-01
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 19-23
- ISSN
- 1098-7886 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1967946388
- Cited by
- 94
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 8
- FWCI
- 1.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal for Nurses in Staff Development (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Palliative and Oncologic Care
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Death, Funerary Practices, and Mourning
- Keywords
- fear of death, nurses, communication about death, end-of-life communication, family communication, communication education, employee development, nursing education
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, Anxiety, Arizona, Attitude of Health Personnel, Attitude to Death, Communication, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Nurse-Patient Relations, Nursing Staff, Hospital, Professional-Family Relations, Surveys and Questionnaires
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
