Attitudes toward death and death acceptance among hemato-oncologists: An Israeli sample.

OBJECTIVE

Hemato-oncologists are highly exposed to patients' death and suffering during their daily work. The current exploratory and cross-sectional study examined death acceptance attitudes, in order to explore whether death acceptance attitudes are associated with fear of death.

METHOD

A convenience sample of 50 Israeli hemato-oncologists currently working in a clinical setting participated in the study. They completed the Death Attitudes Profile revised questionnaire (DAP-R), which examines levels of fear of death, death avoidance, approach acceptance, neutral acceptance, and escape acceptance. In addition, the hemato-oncologists reported on levels of exposure to patients' death and suffering.

RESULTS

A repeated measures MANOVA revealed significantly lower levels of neutral acceptance, compared with approach and escape acceptance. Path analysis for predicting fear of death by the other study variables revealed that death avoidance fully mediated the relationship between approach acceptance and fear of death as well as revealing a negative correlation between neutral acceptance and fear of death (higher neutral acceptance was related to lower fear of death). No associations were found between exposure to death and suffering and attitudes toward death.

SIGNIFICANCE OF RESULTS

In contrast to previous conceptualizations, the ability to adaptively cope with fear of death differed in accordance with death acceptance attitudes. Whereas neutral acceptance adaptively defended from fear of death, approach acceptance was associated with increased fear of death through death avoidance. As hemato-oncologists are highly exposed to patients' death and suffering, and are required to make critical medical decisions on daily basis, these findings may have substantial implications for end-of-life care and the process of medical decision-making regarding the choice of treatment goals: cure, quality of life, and life prolongment. Further research is needed to investigate the role of death acceptance attitudes among hemato-oncologists.