RESUMO
Objective:To explore the mediating effect of empathy between personality traits and death attitude in nursing students.Methods:From April to May 2022, a total of 237 undergraduate nursing students were surveyed by general information questionnaire, big five inventory, Jefferson scale of empathy for nursing students, and death attitude profile-revised. Common method bias test, correlation analysis and descriptive analysis were conducted by SPSS 26.0 software.PROCESS macro program was used to test the mediating effect.Results:Agreeableness(32.78±4.92), empathy(110.03±16.83)were positively correlated with positive death attitude(57.95±12.35)( r=0.274, 0.571, both P<0.01), neuroticism(23.00±4.78)was positively correlated with negative death attitude(31.81±10.04)( r=0.199, P<0.01), empathy was negatively correlated with negative death attitude ( r=-0.226, P<0.01). Empathy partially mediated the relationship between neuroticism and negative death attitude, the mediating effect accounted for 16.08%(0.032/0.199) of the total effect, and empathy played a completely mediating role between the agreeableness and positive death attitude. Conclusion:The death attitude of undergraduate nursing students is mainly natural acceptance. Personality traits can directly affect death attitude and also indirectly affect death attitude through empathy.