Anxiety or reflection? exploring profiles of death awareness among chinese nurses: a latent profile analysis

Nurses frequently encounter death due to their professional roles, impacting their perceptions of mortality. Previous research has largely focused on the negative aspect of death awareness, known as death anxiety, while the other aspect, death reflection, has been less explored. This study aims to investigate the profiles of death awareness among Chinese nurses and identify factors influencing these profiles, such as socio-demographic characteristics, work-related characteristics, death education, and resilience.

A cross-sectional study was conducted using a convenience sample of 2882 nurses across China. Data were collected through an online survey from September to November 2023. Latent Profile Analysis was utilized to identify distinct profiles of death anxiety and death reflection among nurses. Multinomial logistic regression was used to analyze the predictive factors for different death awareness profiles.

Three distinct profiles were identified: Calm Reflectors (low death anxiety, high death reflection), The Anxious (high death anxiety, low death reflection), and Anxious Reflectors (high levels of both death anxiety and death reflection). Factors such as resilience, years of service, parental status, education level, and read death education-related information significantly predicted the classification into these profiles. Specifically, higher resilience and engagement in death education were associated with the Calm Reflectors profile.

Our study suggests that nurses' death awareness can be categorized into three distinct profiles: Calm Reflectors, The Anxious, and Anxious Reflectors. Key predictors of these profiles include resilience, educational level, years of service, parental status, and read death education-related information. The findings suggest that enhancing resilience and targeted educational interventions are crucial for supporting nurses in managing death-related emotional and cognitive responses effectively.