BACKGROUND: Attitudes towards death are related to different social, cultural and religious backgrounds, including fear of death, anxiety and so on. Doctors are the people most likely to be exposed to death in their professional setting, and negative attitudes to death affect their level of care for dying patients. In medical school. The students of medical school are confronting death for the first time, but we know little about their attitudes toward death.
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the death view of medical students and its influencing factors and provide references for death education.
METHODS: An cross-sectional survey was conducted through a self-designed death attitude questionnaire among 1470 medical students in a medical university in Xinjiang, China. Pearson correlation and constituent ratio were used for statistical analysis.
RESULTS: 78.1% of medical students are full of fear of death; 77.0% of medical students could not talk about death openly and naturally in daily life. There were significant differences in the view of death among medical students of different gender (P=0.002), nationality (P=0.004), grade (P<0.001) and family environment (P=0.007). About death education, 82.6% of medical students are willing to accept it, and the most accepted way of death education is the elective course of death education in schools (76.0%).
CONCLUSION: The majority of medical students’view of death still needs to be improved. It is suggested that relevant medical colleges and universities can carry out elective courses of death education to help medical students establish a positive view of death.
