Impact of death education courses on emergency nurses' perception of effective behavioral responses in dealing with sudden death in China: A quasi-experimental study

Background: Nurses in emergency departments have to provide rescue care and life support for moribund patients, but also emotional support to patients' relatives. On the other hand, emergency nurses are also the most vulnerable to the sudden death of patients. Nurses working in the emergency department were invited to participate in a death education course. Objective: To explore the impact of a death education course on the emergency nurses' perception of effective behavioral responses in dealing with sudden death. Design: A quasi-experimental study. Settings: A level A tertiary general hospital in China. Participants: A total number of 34 emergency nurses who met the inclusion criteria were randomly selected from the emergency department. Methods: Participants received a death education course of 20 credit hours based on dealing with a sudden-death model. The general data questionnaire and the Chinese version of the list proposed by Fraser & Atkins were completed before the intervention and six weeks post-intervention. The scores of each item in the effective behavioral response to the sudden death questionnaire of the emergency nurses before and after the intervention were compared. Results: After the intervention, the nurses considered that 10 items were relatively helpful (above 4 points) and 2 items relatively less helpful (< 3 points). The post-intervention average scores of all items were higher than the pre-intervention ones, and there were significant differences in the scores of the 13 items pre- and post-intervention. Conclusion: The death education course enhanced emergency nurses' perceptions of effective behavioral responses in dealing with sudden death, which contributes to the improvement of the quality of their work.