Relationship between End-of-Life Care Stress, Death Anxiety, and Self-Efficacy of Clinical Nurses in South Korea.

Jihee Choi,Sohyune Sok,Minkyung Gu,Sunyoung Oh

doi:10.3390/ijerph19031082

Abstract

In South Korea, the number of cancer patients continues to rise, indicating that nurses have greater access to end-of-life care in clinical settings. This study examined the relationship between the end-of-life care stress, death anxiety, and self-efficacy of clinical nurses in South Korea. A cross-sectional descriptive design was used. Participants were 124 nurses working in university hospitals. Data included the general characteristics of study participants, end-of-life care stress, death anxiety, and self-efficacy. Data were collected from February to March 2021. This study shows that the degrees of end-of-life care stress and death anxiety of clinical nurses in South Korea were higher than the median values. Married nurses had higher self-efficacy than unmarried, and there was a difference between bedside and administrative nurses’ self-efficacy. Nurses with no experience of end-of-life care nursing education had higher death anxiety than nurses with experience. The higher the end-of-life care stress of nurses, the higher the death anxiety. The study suggests that therapeutic and detailed educational programs to reduce end-of-life care stress and death anxiety of clinical nurses are needed, and experimental research to verify this. The results can contribute to countries as an additional and enriching reference.

Highlights

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between end-of-life care stress, death anxiety, and the self-efficacy of clinical nurses in South Korea
The aims of this study were (1) to identify general characteristics of the study participants; (2) to examine the levels of end-of-life care stress, death anxiety, and self-efficacy of clinical nurses; (3) to examine the differences on end-of-life care stress, death anxiety, and self-efficacy according to the general characteristics of the study participants; and (4) to examine the correlations among the end-of-life care stress, death anxiety, and self-efficacy of clinical nurses
Given that most of the nurses have less than 5 years of clinical experience, the ward providing end-of-life care is an environment in which it is difficult to work for a long time due to high work stress related to emotional labor [8,23,24]

Summary

Introduction

In South Korea, the number of cancer deaths was 80,747 in 2018, and it increased to 83,776 in 2020 [1]. Despite the advances in medical technology, the number of cancer patients continues to increase, thereby indicating that nurses are likely to encounter end-of-life care in clinical settings more often [2]. Thematic analysis of care at the end-of-life identified six main topics of interest, namely, uncertainty of treatment for patients at end-of-life, quality of life issues, costs, ethical and social issues, interaction between medical staff and other services, and strategies for out-of-hospital care [3]. Nurses who provide end-of-life care directly face internal problems and experience higher stress as a result of the excessive expectations of patients or caregivers regarding the progress of cancer treatment, repeated ideals, and disappointments in reality [4,5,6]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion