Death Encounters:

The Experience of UNIMAS

Nursing Students during Clinical
Practicum (48872)
Introduction
Death is a normal process of life but it is largely not discussed and it is a taboo topic of discussion in almost all cultures (Iranmanesh et al.,2010).
However, the experience of encountering death might not be a gratifying occurrence for everyone. This is especially so for the nursing students
during their earliest years of clinical practicum. Nursing students have difficulties in dealing with death (Sadala & da Silva, 2009) and death
encounter has a profound impacts on them. (Rosdahl & Kowalski, 2012). There is a need to address the existing issues surrounding patient death
as it is known to hinder the delivery of satisfactory care (Terry & Carrol, 2008). The purpose of this study to explore the experience of nursing in
death encounters, impacts and the their coping strategies.

Research Objectives Research Questions

1. To explore the UNIMAS nursing students’ experience in
encountering death during clinical practicum
2. To study the impacts of encountering death towards UNIMAS
nursing students during clinical practicum.
3. To explore the coping mechanism used by the UNIMAS nursing
students when dealing with their encounters of patient’s death.
1. What is the experience of the UNIMAS nursing students in
encountering death during clinical practicum?
2. What is the impact of death encounters during clinical practicum
towards UNIMAS nursing students?
3. What is the coping mechanism used by the UNIMAS nursing
students when dealing with their encounters of patient’s death?

Methodology
Research Design: Population and Sampling: Instruments: Ethical Consideration: Data Collection:
Descriptive • Purposive Sampling • The researcher • Approved by the Board of • Conducted at FMHS,
Qualitative Study • Year 3 and Year 4 Nursing • Semi-structured Research Ethic Committee of UNIMAS
Students question Faculty of Medicine and Health • Focus group (3-5 persons
• Had encountered death in guidelines Sciences, UNIMAS. per group) interview
the ward at least once • Consent from participants • Audio recorded
• Data saturation achieved
at the tenth participant

Data Analysis:
• Transcribed and analyze manually
• Thematic analysis

Findings Discussion
4.1 : Experiences Of The Nursing Students

4.1.1 The participants verbalized death encounters triggered Limitations

emotional distress.
I felt very sad and guilty. I also felt a bit stress and scared because I
did not know whether I was competent enough to manage my
ceased patient and his relatives. (Ravi)

4.1.2 Insufficient educations on death Discussion

Click here to insert your Discussion text. Type it in
…the current syllabus did not teach us how to properly deal with or copy and paste from your Word document or
patient’s death. The topics on grief and death is as important as other source.
other main topics and the current syllabus did not recognize this. (Az)
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References