| Learning Objective #1: explore the differences between nurses and nursing students attitudes toward death and dying as a result of death and dying educational interventions. | |||
| Learning Objective #2: identify the empirical evidence regarding the impact of theses educational interventions in changing attitudes toward death and dying over the last twenty five years. |
The researcher developed a comprehensive search strategy to retrieve research studies, which summarized the empirical evidence from this large and varied literature. Based on the analyses conducted, it was noted that death-and-dying educational interventions had a meaningful treatment effect in improving attitudes toward death and dying where the overall mean effect size was -0.297 based on 31 studies. In assessing the difference between target populations, it was acknowledged that death-and-dying educational interventions had significant impact in improving nursing students’ attitudes toward death and dying (mean effect -0.043 based on 11 studies) in contrast to nurses attitudes (mean effect size = -0.447 based on 20 studies).
In analyzing the differences in reference to the year of publication, it was found that the period 1980-2005 revealed varied treatment effect in changing nurses’ and nursing students’ attitudes toward death and dying as a result of death-and-dying educational interventions. This means that the 1980s (mean effect -0.394 based on 19 studies) and 2000s (mean effect size = -0.326 based three studies) showed improvement in attitudes toward death and dying as a result of death-and-dying educational interventions compared to the 1990s (mean effect size = -0.185 based on nine studies). The findings from this meta-analysis will help guide and inform future nursing educators to develop educational interventions that improve the care of dying patients.