Correlation Between Death Attitudes, Purpose In Life And Job Burnout Of Medical Staff In Tertiary General Hospital Of Hunan Province

Objectives To investigate the attitudes toward death,purpose of life and the level of job burnout of medical staff, then to explore the relationship between purpose of life, the job burnout and the attitudes toward death.The influential factors have been discussed to provide the theoretical basis to improve the level of purpose of life,and decrease the level of job burnout of medical staff.Methods From April to October in 2010, the medical staffs who work in the tertiary general hospital of Hunan province have been investigated by completely random method in in Hunan Province.There were 1200 volunteers who acceted the investigations and filled in the questionairs,1150 were retrieved,of which 1000 effictive records,the effective retrieve-ratio:86.96%. The questionnaires were composed with four parts:the demographic information questionairs of medical staff,and Death Attitude Profile-Revised(DAP-R), Purpose in Life Test(PIL), Maslach Burnout Inventory MBI—HSS.The statitistical data were analyzed by the Stastistical Package for Social Science(SPSS)17.0,and the strategies included descriptive stastistics,independent-sample t-test,ANOVA,Pearon correlation analysis and multiple linear regression.Results 1.On average, the medical staffs in the third grade hospital scored 2.85 points on the fear of death,2.98 points on the death avoidance,3.91 points on the natural acceptance,2.53 points on the approach acceptance,2.61 points on the escape acceptance; The average score on the purpose of life and job burnout were 63.70,64.71 respectively.2.T-test and one-way ANOVA analysis showed that there were significant differences between groups in the sex,age,religious belief, marital status, educational background,years of working,the title of technical post, profession, whether or not have children,serious disease experience, physiology and psychology conditions,parents still are alive or dead,the situation of talking about death at home, caring dying patient experiences, the comfort to dying or terminal patient,the frenquency to contact the dead,the times of taking part in funerals,whether or not receive death education or hospice care course,having readings about death.3. In a multiple stepwise regression analysis showed that the influencing factors of fear of death were the situation of talking about death at home, marital status, the comfort to dying or terminal patient, profession, father's work, the times of taking part in funerals; the influencing factors of death avoidance were the situation of talking about death at home, whether or not have children,having readings about death,profession, the times of taking part in funerals; the influencing factors of natural acceptance were the educational background, serious disease experience, caring dying patients experiences the influencing factors of approach acceptance were the father's work, the times of taking part in funerals, religious belief,educational background;the influencing factors of escape acceptance were years of working, psychology conditions, the frenquency to contact the dead.4. Pearson correlation analysis showed that there were negative correlation between fear of death, approach acceptance,escape acceptance and the purpose of life; positive correlation between fear of death and job burnout.Conclusion 1. In general,the attitudes toward death of medical staff was at a relatively positive; the purpose of life is in the median level, and the job burnout in relatively high level.2.The influencing factors of death attitudes include variables,family background and living experiences, working and learning experiences.3.Job burnout and fear of death is significant positively correlated.4.Fear of death,approach acceptance,escape acceptance and the purpose of life are negatively correlated.