Hirakawa Yoshihisa, Masuda Yuichiro, Kuzuya Masafumi, Iguchi Akihisa, Uemura Kazumasa
Department of Geriatrics, Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya University.
Nihon Ronen Igakkai Zasshi. 2007 Mar;44(2):247-50. doi: 10.3143/geriatrics.44.247.
We conducted a national survey to examine how programs to teach end-of-life care to medical students in Japanese medical schools influence their death attitude.
Sixteen medical schools participated. We conducted a questionnaire survey on fifth- or sixth-year medical students' death attitude at each medical school. Attitude of death was analyzed by the Death Attitude Inventory formed by Hirai et al, which is composed of seven factors: Afterlife belief, Death anxiety, Death relief, Death avoidance, Life purpose, Death concern, and Supernatural belief. We studied how students' attitude to death relates to programs to teach end-of-life care.
Overall 1,017 of 1,510 students (67.4%) from the 16 medical schools participated. The students who took a program to teach end-of-life care presented Afterlife belief, Death concern and Supernatural belief score higher than those who did not participate in any program. Multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted and it was found that those trend disappeared, and the students who took a program had greater Death anxiety significantly higher than those who took no program.
We concluded that the attitude of medical students to death was not related to programs to teach end-of-life care in medical schools. Our survey suggested that improving end-of-life care education is needed to mold the attitude of medical students to death.
我们开展了一项全国性调查，以研究日本医学院校中针对医学生开展的临终关怀教学项目如何影响他们对死亡的态度。
16所医学院校参与了调查。我们在每所医学院校针对五、六年级医学生的死亡态度进行了问卷调查。死亡态度采用平井等人编制的死亡态度量表进行分析，该量表由七个因素组成：来世信念、死亡焦虑、死亡解脱、死亡回避、生命目的、对死亡的关注和超自然信念。我们研究了学生对死亡的态度与临终关怀教学项目之间的关系。
16所医学院校的1510名学生中，共有1017名（67.4%）参与调查。参加临终关怀教学项目的学生在来世信念、对死亡的关注和超自然信念方面的得分高于未参加任何项目的学生。进行了多元逻辑回归分析，结果发现这些趋势消失了，参加项目的学生的死亡焦虑显著高于未参加项目的学生。
我们得出结论，医学生对死亡的态度与医学院校的临终关怀教学项目无关。我们的调查表明，需要改进临终关怀教育，以塑造医学生对死亡的态度。
