Sağlık ve Hemşirelik Yönetimi Dergisi (Sep 2024)

The Relationship Between Intensive Care Nurses' Tanatophobia Levels and the Conscience Stress and Compassion Fatigue

  • Tuğçe Çamlıca,
  • Ali Özkan,
  • Handan Kartal

DOI
https://doi.org/10.54304/shyd.2024.36744
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 2
pp. 333 – 343

Abstract

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Aim: This study was planned to investigate the relationship between tanataphobia levels, conscience stress and compassion fatigue in intensive care nurses working in a university hospital. Method: The study was conducted between 20.10.2022 and 20.04.2023 with the participation of 113 intensive care nurses working in a university hospital who agreed to participate in the study. Data were collected using a 24-question information form prepared by the researchers in the literature and the Tanataphobia (Fear of Death) Scale, the Stress of Conscience Questionnaire and the Compassion Fatigue-Short Scale. The conformity of the data to the normal distribution was assessed using the Shapiro-Wilk and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests. The Mann Whitney U test and the Kruskal Wallis test were used to compare the data. The Pearson correlation analysis was used to examine the relationship between variables. Significance was evaluated at p<0.001 and p<0.05 levels. Results: It was found that 95.6% of the intensive care nurses who participated in the study encountered death cases in the unit where they worked, 54.9% saw an average of 3 or more death cases in a month, 75.2% had no difficulty in caring for patients in the terminal period, 53.1% wanted to receive in-service training on fear of death, 32% of them considered it natural when they encountered a case of death for the first time and 74% considered it natural when they encountered a case of death at the moment. In addition, the mean total scores of the nurses were 30.17 (SD=9.37), 56.32 (SD=47.94), and 58.59 (SD=23.61) on the Tanataphobia (Fear of death) Scale, the Stress of Conscience Questionnaire and the Compassion Fatigue-Short Scale, respectively. Conclusion: In this study, it was seen that intensive care nurses experienced fear of death above the medium level, compassion fatigue at medium level and conscience stress at low level. In addition, it was determined that the nurses' feelings of compassion fatigue (p<0.001) and conscience stress (p<0.05) increased as the level of fear of death they experienced increased.

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