• Korean Journal of Hospice Care
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.1-16
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• 2008

Hospice should help a patient maintain spiritual well-being and its attitudes toward death can have great effects on treatment and nursing of patients on terminal patient. The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in spiritual well-being and attitudes toward death due to taking a Hospice Subject in Nursing Students This is a comparative study design in which 31 senior nursing students of taking a hospice care subject and 27 senior nursing students of not taking a hospice care subject in college of nursing K university, that is located B metropolitan city in Korea. The instruments for spiritual well-being measuring tools was Kim's (2006) revision and complement of the translation by Choe (1990) on the basis of the spiritual well-being scale developed by Paloutzian and Ellison (1983). The instruments for attitudes toward death was researches revision and complement of the translation by Kim(1992) on the basis of the attitudes toward death Measuring Tool developed by Thorson and Powell (1988). Data were collected from June 1 through June 30, 2006; the researcher got permission from the subjcts, explained objectives of the research to subjects personally and got their permission, and distributed structured questionnaires to make a response in a self-administered basis. For data analysis, an SPSS WINDOWS 12.0 program was used for frequency, percentage, the mean, standard deviation, the minimum, the maximum, x2-test, ANCOVA, and Pearson's correlation coefficients. The main results of this research are as follows: 1. There were no differecnces the degree of spiritual well-being and the degree of attitudes toward death between nursing students who took a hospice subject and nursing students who did not take a hospice Subject, except several items of attitudes toward death. There was significant positive correlation (r= .508, p= .000) between subjects spiritual well-being and attitudes toward death. That is, the higher spiritual well-being, the more positive attitudes toward death. In conclusion, although there were no differecnces spiritual well-being and attitudes toward death between nursing students who took a hospice care subject and nursing students who did not take a hospice care subject, in nursing students, spiritual well-being was relatively high and their attitudes toward death was relatively positive. To help a nursing students make a positive change in attitudes toward death, a nursing intervention program is necessary to improve spiritual well-being.