[The Relationship Between Life Attitude and Death Coping Self-Efficacy in Intensive Care Nurses]

Critical care nurses must often care for patients who are dying and their families. Thus, understanding the self-efficacy and life attitudes of nursing staff in the ICU in response to death is important to the development and provision of relevant education and training.

This study was designed to explore the self-efficacy of ICU nurses in response to death and related predictive factors.

This was a cross-sectional research study. The subjects were 216 nurses in the adult ICU of a medical center in northern Taiwan. The research tools used included the death coping self-efficacy scale and the life attitude scale. Data were analyzed using Pearson's correlation, t-test, one-way ANOVA, and multiple regression.

The results showed: 1. In terms of death coping self-efficacy, the mean score was 112.0 ± 14.3, with the highest scoring subscale, hospice care, earning a mean score of 51.1 ± 6.3. In terms of life attitude, the mean score was 128.9 ± 13.8, with the highest scoring subscale, life autonomy, earning a mean score of 24.0 ± 3.2. 2. Nurses with experiences of withdrawal of life support had better coping efficacy (t = 1.94, p = .05) and those with a graduate degree or above earned a better average life attitude score than those educated to the university / junior college level. 3. Age and ICU seniority were found to correlate positively with grief-related coping skills (r = .241- .315), with the life-attitude subscales of aspiring, life-autonomy, love, and caring showing positive correlations with death coping self-efficacy (r = .138- .482). 4. The predictors found in this study for death coping self-efficacy were age, aspiring, life-autonomy, love, and caring, with a total explained variance of 30.1% (F = 12.78, p < .001).

The results of this study indicate that education level and having hospice care experience are both significant predictors of life attitude in ICU nurses, which is a factor that is known to affect self-efficacy in response to death. Life attitude and hospice care training programs for ICU nurses should be promoted to foster positive life attitudes and thereby enhance self-efficacy in response to death to improve the quality of intensive clinical care.