A Study on Attitude to Euthanasia by Student Nurses

Kim, So Nam

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the attitude of student nurses to euthanasia. The convenient sample for this study consisted of 293 nursing students at a nursing college in Kyeongi Province. The data were collected from Oct. 15, 2002 to Oct. 30, 2002 and were analyzed using frequency, percentage, and X2-test with the SAS package. The results of this study are as follow :77.1% of students agreed to passive euthanasia and 70.6% subjects agreed to legalization of passive euthanasia.78.5% of students can given an exact explanation of the concept of hospice. They obtained information about hospice from the mass media (1.1%), books (30.0%), friends and neighbors (3.4%), and religious groups (2.4%). The preferred place for death was reported to be home (75.4%), hospital (9.4%) or a peaceful place (6.3%).Fears of facing death were suffering in death (23.4%), grief of remaining family (21.2%), unknown about the other world (10.0%), separation from people who are loved (9.7%), forgotten from the people's memory(6.3%). In conclusion, the attitude of student nurses toward passive euthanasia approached a positive direction. But euthanasia was seen as dangerous and having multiple problems. Therefore the training for student nurses as health professionals should include content on dealing with hospice care and euthanasia.