The Contribution of Death-Related Experiences to Health Care Providers' Attitudes toward Dying Patients: II. Medical and Nursing Students with No Professional Experience

Beginning medical and nursing students with no professional death-related experience were compared in order to discover the attitudes they bring to their respective careers prior to their professional education and socialization. Hypotheses were derived from psychological models for the effects of professional choice, gender, and non-professional experience on these attitudes. On five of the six attitude measures female nursing students expressed a more positive attitude than cither male or female medical students, as predicted. However, contrary to expectation, the attitudes of the female medical students were not more positive than those of the male medical students on any of these measures. Hours of death-and-dying coursework and general life experience exerted a significant influence on attitudes toward talking to dying patients about death and dying but not on any of the other attitude measures. These data also suggest the existence of an underlying attitude structure, representing these students' Overall Attitude toward caring for dying patients, which remains stable across group differences in professional career choice, gender, and death-related experience. The original theoretical models were enriched and revised in the light of these findings.