Correlation between hospice competence and death coping ability among nursing students in China: A cross-sectional survey.

BACKGROUND: Palliative care involves providing comprehensive physical, psychological, and social care to improve clinical symptoms and quality of life, as well as to ensure patients' dignity at the end of life. Nurses are important members of hospice care teams, and undergraduate nursing students are the hospice care providers of the future. The ability of undergraduate nursing students to provide hospice care will, thus, directly affect service quality. OBJECTIVE: To understand the relationship between hospice competence and the death-coping abilities of nursing students and provide a theoretical basis for promoting the development of hospice education for nursing students. METHODS: A convenience sample of 204 nursing students from a university in China completed the general conditions questionnaire, Hospice Competency Assessment Questionnaire, and a simplified version of the Coping with Death Scale. RESULTS: The participants' overall average hospice competency score was 46 (35-52), with an average score of 3.0 (2.3-3.3) for effective caregiving skills, 2.6 (2.0-3.0) for cultural and ethical values, and 3.0 (2.2-3.4) for interprofessional teamwork. The average death-coping competency score was 92 (72-107). Multivariate logistic regression and Spearman's correlation analysis showed a positive correlation between death-coping and hospice competencies (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Nursing students' overall hospice competency is low to moderate. Consequently, nurse educators should effectively modify the hospice education curriculum using the Dedicated Education Unit model.

Stigma predicting fertility quality of life among Chinese infertile women undergoing in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate stigma and fertility quality of life (FertiQoL) and identify predictors of FertiQoL in Chinese infertile women undergoing in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer (IVF-ET). METHODS: A descriptive correlational design was adopted to investigate the association between stigma and FertiQoL in 588 infertile women undergoing IVF-ET. The personal information questionnaire, Infertility Stigma Scale (ISS) and FertiQoL tool were used to measure study variables. RESULTS: The mean scores of ISS and FertiQoL were 62.59 (SD = 21.58) and 63.64 (SD = 13.72), respectively. There were significant differences of ISS scores among participants with different educational level, residence, occupation, religious belief, financial condition, age group, duration of infertility and infertility treatment, while significant differences of the FertiQoL scores were found in participants with different insurance status, determinism of etiology, infertile type, duration of infertility treatment and cycles of IVF-ET. Pearson's correlation analysis showed stigma was negatively correlated with FertiQoL (r = -0.081 to -0.669, p < .05). The self-devaluation (ß = -0.290, p < .001), social withdrawal (ß = -0.237, p < .001), family stigma (ß = -0.217, p < .001) and insurance status (ß = 0.066, p=.035) were identified as the significant predictor of FertiQoL accounting for 43.5% of variance. CONCLUSIONS: The stigma was significantly associated with FertiQoL in infertile women undergoing IVF-ET with higher level of stigma predicting poorer FertiQoL. More psychological support should be provided to infertile women to reduce stigma and improve FertiQoL.