Nursing care of the dying: its relationship to selected nurse characteristics

This study examined the relationship between the quality of nursing care given to terminally-ill patients and their families, and selected characteristics of 210 nurses caring for terminally-ill patients. Mailed questionnaires received 90% response from nurses in a two-stage, stratified, proportionate, random sampling plan. Independent variables studied were: death anxiety, educational experience, personal experience and professional experience. Dependent variables studied were three measures of the quality of nursing care: communication, continuity of care and family care. Kendall's tau and parametric partial correlation coefficients were used for data analysis. The study results show that 13 of the 18 statistical tests were significant at 0.05.