Exploring the Variations in Death Anxiety among Oncology Nurses in China: A Latent Class Analysis

Abstract

Abstract Background Various factors have been found to be associated with high levels of death anxiety experienced by oncology nurses. However, the identification of internal heterogeneity of their death anxiety has not been fully explored. Methods A cross-sectional survey conducted in Jiangsu Province, China, to assess the level of death anxiety, palliative care knowledge, and attitude of registered oncology nurses towards palliative care. The collected data were analyzed using Latent Class Analysis (LCA), logistic regression, and Pearson correlation. Results A two-potential-category model was selected based on the fit index. The results showed that 79.17% of oncology nurses belonged to the high pressure and pain group and 20.83% belonged to the low death anxiety group. The high pressure and pain group had significantly higher scores in the dimensions of emotion, stress and pain, time awareness, and cognition compared to the low death anxiety group. Factors influencing the high pressure and pain group included shorter working years, non-national or provincial oncology nursing specialists, non-national palliative care specialists, never discussing the topic of death with patients or family members, no palliative care related training, and PCQN and FATCOD scores. Conclusions Our study suggests that oncology nurses' death anxiety can be divided into two categories: low death anxiety and high stress pain, and certain factors, such as being female, having a short work experience, and lacking palliative care-related training, increase the likelihood of death anxiety.