Abstract
Euthanasia is undoubtedly the protagonist of many of the debates around the end of life both among health staff and in the general population. Considering that nurses provide care for terminally ill patients and support families and patients in their final days, it is essential to know their attitudes towards euthanasia. The aims of the study were to adapt and validate the Attitude Towards Euthanasia scale to a Spanish context, to test the dimensionality and to estimate the reliability of the scale. A cross-sectional study was conducted with a non-probabilistic sample of Spanish health-workers of 201 in a University Hospital in Ciudad Real. A self-reported socio-demographic questionnaire and the Euthanasia Attitude Scale were used for data collection. The psychometric properties of the scale were assessed, including reliability and validity using an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Cronbach’s alpha of the Attitude Towards Euthanasia scale was α = 0.827 and McDonald’s Omega = 0.903. The range of items of homogeneity was from 0.205 to 0.685. For the different exploratory factor analyses carried out, the Bartlett’s test of sphericity was p < 0.001 and the sample index value of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin was over 0.802. in all cases. We present the factorial weights for three models: The first one assumes a unidimensional solution, the second model was composed by three factors and the third model was composed by four factors. In the confirmatory factor analysis, the three models presented an acceptable fit index. The Attitude Towards Euthanasia scale adaptation to a sample of Spanish health workers has shown, with some limitations, appropriate psychometric properties. There have been several differences between the original factorial solution. It would be necessary to replicate the study to reinforce the findings about the number of factors of the scale.
Highlights
The term euthanasia itself comes etymologically from Greek, and means “good death,”“peaceful death,” or “death without suffering” [1]
We can differentiate direct euthanasia from indirect euthanasia, some authors prefer not to quote this term as they consider that there is no euthanasia if there is no intention to cause death [2]
Regarding the different factors that have been observed and that have a direct influence on the opinion/attitudes that health professionals have towards euthanasia, of special relevance we find religion as one of the most predictive factors and in negative correlation with support for euthanasia [6,7,8,9,10] Gender, educational level, marital status and number of children are some of the factors that other researchers have studied [11,12,13]
Summary
The term euthanasia itself comes etymologically from Greek, and means “good death,”. “peaceful death,” or “death without suffering” [1]. The different classifications as active or passive, direct or indirect, and even the different related concepts such as assisted suicide, orthotasia, distanasia, etc. We can differentiate direct euthanasia (the process of bringing forward the death of a person who has an incurable disease) from indirect euthanasia, some authors prefer not to quote this term as they consider that there is no euthanasia if there is no intention to cause death [2]. Within direct euthanasia we can distinguish two types, active euthanasia, which. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 3855; doi:10.3390/ijerph17113855 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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