Undergraduate social work student attitudes about death and end-of-life care

The purpose of this study was to describe undergraduate social work students' death attitudes, their perceived level of comfort working with the terminally ill, and the relationships between death attitudes and comfort. The effects of demographics were also studied.;A total of 103 undergraduate social work students from the Bachelor of Arts in Social Work program at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) participated in the study. Participants were recruited from 6 different classes on the CSULB campus and provided with a self-administered questionnaire. A variety of significant results were found. Overall, undergraduate social work students were found to have moderate levels of both fear of death and avoidance of death. Those undergraduate social work students who had high levels of fear of death or avoidance of thoughts and feelings having to do with death were significantly less comfortable working with the terminally ill.;Implications for social work practice and educational policy include the need for undergraduate social work faculty to address death in their classrooms in order to reduce student fear and avoidance of death and increase comfort working with the terminally ill.