Thanatic attitudes of nurses working in the intensive care unit

Introduction
The intensive care unit is one of the places where the work of nurses is accompanied by death.

Aim of the study
To indicate the most common thanatic attitudes presented by nurses working in the intensive care unit.

Material and methods
The study was performed by diagnostic survey questionnaire technique. The tool was the author’s own questionnaire supplemented with the Scale of Attitudes to Death, which is part of the Inventory of Attitudes to Death by J. Makselon. The study involved 108 nurses working in the intensive care unit of the University Hospital in Krakow.

Results
The most commonly represented thanatic attitude in the studied population was the attitude of value (85% of respondents). Other attitudes related to death were as follows: necessity, mystery, or tragedy. Most thanatic attitudes slightly positively (0.21 ≤ r ≤ 0.3) correlate with the age of the respondents, i.e. with the increase in the age of nurses, the intensity of thanatic attitudes such as tragedy, terror, absurdity, destructiveness, centrality, and value increased. The attitude of tragedy correlated most strongly with age (p = 0.002).

Conclusions
Nurses working in the intensive care unit most often showed an attitude of necessity and value regarding death. The centrality attitude did not occur in the group of respondents. The attitudes of the nurses relating to death depend on age, while the length of work in the intensive care unit and the number of experienced deaths do not affect their diversity.