HealthResJ, health, medicine, nursing, research https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/HealthResJ/sitemap

Τhe effect of the religious attitudes on the death attitudes and death anxiety in elderly intensive care patients: a cross-sectional study

PDF
Published: Oct 9, 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/healthresj.28190
Keywords:
Death Anxiety Religious Attitudes Elderly Intensive Care Unit
Tuğba Menekli
Assistant Professor, Department of internal medicine nursing, Malatya Turgut Özal University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Battalgazi/ Malatya
Runida Doğan
Assistant Professor, Department of Surgical Nursing, Inonu University, Faculty of Nursing, Malatya
Abstract

Background: Negative death attitudes and death fear were reported at a high level among intensive care patients. Research indicates that nurses should know the factors affecting the death attitudes and death anxiety in intensive care patients to reduce these high levels of anxiety and negative attitudes. Religions have a strong relationship with death.

Aim: This cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the effect of religious attitudes on death attitudes and death anxiety in elderly intensive care patients.

Methods: The data of the study were collected between January 2019 and January 2020 in the intensive care unit of a university hospital in a province located in the east of Turkey. A total of 185 elderly patients participated in the study. Patient Identification Form, Ok-Religious Attitude Scale (ORAS), the Death Anxiety Scale (DAS), and Death Attitudes Profile-Revised (DAP) were used for data collection. IBM SPSS version 25.0 was used for data analysis.

Results: Most of the patients (88.6%) were at high level of self-reported religious attitudes. The mean DAS score of the patients was 9.02 ± 1.64, DAP was 120.40 ± 23.70, and ORAS was 31.25 ± 2.90. According to regression analysis, the increase in ORAS scores decreased the DAS score and increased the DAP score (p <0.05).

Conclusion: There was a negative relationship between religious attitudes and death anxiety and a positive relationship between religious attitudes and attitudes towards death in elderly patients in intensive care units. Nurses should evaluate the patients’ religious attitudes while they plan interventions to reduce patients’ death anxiety or to develop positive attitudes toward death in these patients.

Article Details
  • Section
  • Original Articles

Copyright notice:

Authors retain copyright of their work and grant the Health and Research Journal the right of first publication.

License:
Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This license permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, including for commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given to the author(s) and the original publication in this journal, a link to the license is provided, and any changes are indicated.

Attribution requirement:
Any reuse must include the article citation and DOI (where available), and indicate if changes were made.

Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
References
Barnett MD, Reed CM, Adams CM. Death Attitudes, Pallia-tive Care Self-efficacy, and Attitudes Toward Care of the Dying Among Hospice Nurses. J Clin Psychol Med Settings 2021;28(2):295-300.
Ghasemi F, Atarodi A, Hosseini SS. The Relationship Be-tween Religious Attitudes and Death Anxiety in the Elderly People. JRH 2020;10(3):135-42.
Fleming J, Farquhar M, Cambridge City over-75s Cohort (CC75C) Study Collaboration, Brayne C, Barclay S. Death and the oldest old: attitudes and preferences for end-of-life care-qualitative research within a population-based cohort study. PloS one 2016;11(4):e0150686.
Ozdemir A, Serin EK, Savas M. The Relationship Between the Stress Perceived by the Intensive Care Patient’s Rela-tives with Their Religious Attitudes and Behaviors: Turkey Sample. J Relig Health 2021;60(2):752-63.
Özer Z, Yıldırım D, Bölüktaş RP. Hemşirelik Öğrencilerinin Ölüme Karşı Tutumları. IJESR 2015;2(4):1-13.
Beydag KD. Factors affecting the death anxiety levels of relatives of cancer patients undergoing treatment. Asian Pac J Cancer Prev 2012;13(5):2405-8.
Gonen G, Kaymak SU, Cankurtaran ES, Karslioglu EH, Ozalp E, Soygur H. The factors contributing to death anxiety in cancer patients. J Psychosoc Oncol 2012;30(3):347-58.
Lindenfors P, Divine P. Health and the evolution of reli-gion. Hum Ecol 2019; 47(2):157–63.
Shirkavand L, Abbaszadeh A, Borhani F, Momenyan S. Correlation between spiritual well-being with satisfaction with life and death anxiety among elderlies suffering from cancer. Electron J Gen Med 2018;15(3):1-7.
Sedgwick P. Cross-sectional studies: advantages and dis-advantages. BMJ 2014;348:g2276.
Connelly LM. Cross-sectional survey research. Medsurg Nursing 2016;25(5):369.
Işik E, Fadiloğlu Ç, Demir Y. Ölüme Karşı Tutum Ölçeğinin Türkçe Çevirisinin Hemşire Populasyonunda Geçerlik ve Güvenilirlik Çalışması. Turkish J Res Dev Nurs 2009;11(2);28-43.
Brudek P, Sekowski M. Wisdom as the mediator in the relationships between religious meaning system and atti-tude toward death among older adults. Death Stud 2020;44(12):747-58.
Templer DI. The construction and validation of death anx-iety scale. J General Psychology 1970;82:165-74.
Şenol C. Ankara İlinde Kurumlarda Yaşayan Yaşlılarda Ölüme İlişkin Kaygı ve Korkular. Yüksek Lisans Tezi, Ankara Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Ankara,1989.
Wong P, Reker G, Gesser G. Death Attitude Profile–Revised. In Death Anxiety Handbook, In RA Neimeyer (Ed.) Wash-ington, DC: Taylor &Francis, 1994;120–44.
Ok Ü. Dini tutum ölçeği: ölçek geliştirme ve geçerlik çalışması. UİBD 20118(2):528-49.
Sharma P, Asthana HS, Gambhir IS, Ranjan JK. Death anxie-ty among elderly people: role of gender, spirituality and mental health. Indian Journal of Gerontology 2019;33(3):240-54.
Bakan AB, Arli SK, Yıldız M. Relationship between religious orientation and death anxiety in elderly individuals. J Relig Health 2019;58(6):2241-50.
Bakhtiari A, Yadollahpur M, Omidvar S, Ghorbannejad S, Bakouei F. Does religion predict health-promoting behav-iors in community-dwelling elderly people?. J Relig Health 2019;58(2):452-64.
Menzies RE, Sharpe L, Dar‐Nimrod I. The relationship be-tween death anxiety and severity of mental illnesses. Br J Clin Psychol 2019;58(4):452-67.
Solaimanizadeh F, Mohammadinia N, Solaimanizadeh L. The relationship between spiritual health and religious coping with death anxiety in the elderly J Relig Health 2020;59(4):1925-32.
Fadila DES, Ebeid IAES, El-Gilany AH. Death attitude and its associated factors in institutionalized elderly: A cross-section study in North Eastern Delta, Egypt. IOSR-JNHS 2018;7(6):12-9.
Turner M. Can the effects of religion and spirituality on both physical and mental health be scientifically meas-ured? An overview of the key sources, with particular refer-ence to the teachings of Said Nursi. J Relig Health 2015;54(6):2045–51.
Mehri Nejad SA, Ramezan Saatchi L, Paydar S. Death anxie-ty and its relationship with social support and adherence to religion in the elderly. Iran J Ageing 2017;11(4):494-503.
Saeed F, Bokharey IZ . Gender Differences, Life Satisfaction, its Correlate and Death Anxiety in Retirement. Iran J Psychi-atry Clin Psychol 2016; 5(2):00280.
Solaimanizadeh F, Mohammadinia N, Solaimanizadeh L. The relationship between spiritual health and religious coping with death anxiety in the elderly. J Relig Health 2020;59(4):1925-32.
Atadokht A, Rahimi S, Valinejad S. The Role of health pro-moting lifestyle and religious orientation in predicting quality of life and death anxiety in elders. Psychol Aging 2018;4(2):143-54.
Seo Y, Shin S. The Relationship among Attitudes toward the Withdrawal of Life-sustaining Treatment, Death Anxiety, and Death Acceptance among Hospitalized Elderly Cancer Patients. Asian Oncol Nurs 2019;19(3):142-9.
Meneguin S, Pollo CF, Benichel CR, Cunha LK, Miot HA. Comfort and religious-spiritual coping of intensive care pa-tients’ relatives. Intensive Crit Care Nurs 2020;58:102805.
Naseri-Salahshour V, Varaei S, Sajadi M, Tajdari S, Sabzali-gol M, Fayazi N. The effect of religious intervention on the level of consciousness of comatose patients hospitalized in an intensive care unit: a randomized clinical trial. Eur J In-tegr Med 2018;21:53-7.
Yazgan E, Demir A. Factors affecting the tendency of can-cer patients for religion and spirituality: A questionnaire-based study. J Relig Health 2019;58(3):891-907.
Wong LP, Fung HH, Jiang D. Associations between religi-osity and death attitudes: Different between Christians and Buddhists? Psycholog Relig Spiritual 2015;7:70–9.
Chen Q, Flaherty JH, Guo JH, Zhou Y, Zhang XM, Hu XY. Attitudes of older Chinese patients toward death and dy-ing. J Palliat Med 2017;20(12):1389-94.