Nurses? attitudes or response mechanism when faced with death in western culture
Section: LEARNING TO TEACH
Authors
1Encarnación Ferrandiz Boyer, 1Finabel Riera Pons, 1Clara Pérez González, 2Esperanza Ferrer Ferrandis
Position
1Alumnas de la EUE La Fe, Valencia.2Profesora de la asignatura Salud, Enfermedad y Cultura de la EUE La Fe, Valencia.
Contact address
Bárbara Banacloche Campillo. EUE La Fe. Avda Campanar, 21. 46009 Valencia.
Contact email: bárbara_bcampillo@hotmail.com
Abstract
Nurses’s attitudes when faced with death in different cultures can be understood in terms of Madeleine Leininger’s theory, which is based on transcultural nursing. Its main priority is culturally focused nursing care. Several articles on the topic of death and how nurses respond to it have been reviewed.
Several sources were searched to find the documents. A bibliographic search was conducted in March 2008 in CUIDENplus using the following descriptors: nursing, death, Madeleine Leininger and attitudes.
This article presents the nurses’ perspectives on death in western culture. In this culture, people do not want to face death even though death is a continuous presence in our lives. Sometimes we are not really aware that it is just another phase of life, even if we experience it firsthand.
It is important to talk about nursing attitudes when faced with death from a personal and professional perspective. First, the nurse must personally accept and integrate death as one more phase in life, to later be able to incorporate this awareness into professional practice in the patient’s best interest.
Keywords:
death; transcultural nursing; attitudeswestern culture
Versión en Español
Título:
Actitudes de las enfermeras ante la muerte en la cultura occidental
