Death Anxiety in Hospice Employees

Abstract

To measure hospice employees’ perceptions of their own death, the Revised Death Anxiety Scale (RDAS) was implemented among 128 employees at a Midwest hospice facility. Participants were asked to indicate their age, gender, position, and length of time employed in a hospice. Results indicated a negative correlation between RDAS scores and length of time employed in a hospice for “non-nurses” ( p = .011). Overall, RDAS scores were extremely low when compared with a recent study that implemented the RDAS in a group of hospice nurses ( Halliday & Boughton, 2008 ). Research of this nature should continue because a better understanding of how hospice employees experience their own mortality will allow hospices to better serve patients and patients’ friends and families.