Visiting Nurses’ Views on Life and Death: Relationships to Personal Background

Abstract

The objective of the present study was to elucidate the relationship between visiting nurses’ views on life and death and their personal background. A survey was conducted on 354 visiting nurses working at one of 52 visiting nursing stations in Prefecture A, and a total of 221 responses were analyzed.

Analysis of the relationships between factors on the views on life and death scale and personal background using one-way analysis of variance, Tukey’s honestly significant difference HSD test, and t-test showed significant differences between “death as a form of liberation” and age (p 0.010), years of clinical experience (p =0.002), and having many years of clinical experience in internal medicine ( p 0.033). Significant differences were also seen between “fear and anxiety toward death” and age (p 0.037) and between “avoidance of the issue of death” and years of visiting nursing experience (p 0.024). “A sense of purpose in life” was higher in nurses who had a sense of satisfaction regarding past terminal care (p ＜0.001). These findings suggest that accumulation of experience while having a clear sense of purpose, specifically providing indirect support for patients and families without avoiding the issue of death until the very end so that patients can live their lives to the fullest and in their own way while positively accepting death, promotes the quality (sense of satisfaction) of terminal care and leads to enhancement of views on life and death.