Attitude Towards Euthanasia Among Nursing Officers

Abstract

Every human being wants to live and enjoy the fruits of life till he dies. But sometimes a human being wishes to earnestly end his life by use of unnatural means. This will be abnormal to end one’s life in such way. Nursing staff spend most of time with patient at end of life so they can understand how much painful it is. The present study was conducted to assess the attitude towards euthanasia among nursing ofÀcers working in ICUs. In this study, cross sectional descriptive research survey design was adopted. Participants were selected through a non-probability convenient sampling technique, in which 90 Nursing ofÀcers working in ICUs were enrolled. Euthanasia Attitude Scale which has 4 domains and each domain is having some items (total 20 items) with the 5-point Likert scale (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly Agree) to assess the attitude of Nursing ofÀcers. The study revealed that out of 90 nursing ofÀ cers 47 (52.22%) had Neutral attitude and 43 (47.77%) had Favourable attitude towards euthanasia. No association was found between participants’ attitude and demographic variables. Most of the nursing ofÀcers had neutral attitude toward euthanasia. We recommend that same study may be conducted in different settings to know the attitude of nursing ofÀcers who are working in general ward and unit.