RT Journal Article
T1 Attitudes of nursing students towards the legalization of euthanasia, end-of-life planning and the spiritual dimension: A quantitative study
A1 Ortega Galán, Ángela María
A1 Fernández Martínez, Elia
A1 Ibáñez Masero, Olivia
A1 Ortiz Amo, Rocío
A1 Gómez Beltrán, Piedras Alba
A1 Ruiz Fernández, María Dolores
AB Background: The Law on Euthanasia was approved in Spain and implemented in the health system. Nursingstudents must position themselves with respect to euthanasia in their work in the near future.Objectives: To know the attitudes of nursing students towards the legalization of euthanasia, its relationship withend-of-life planning, and the spiritual dimension.Design: A cross-sectional descriptive quantitative study.Settings and participants: Study carried out with students of the Nursing Degree at the Universities of Huelva andAlmería in Spain from April to July 2021.Methods: Attitudes towards the final phase of life, Anxiety towards death, and Attitudes towards Euthanasiaquestionnaires were administered. Descriptive, inferential and logistic regression statistics were calculated todetermine the relationship between attitudes towards euthanasia and sociodemographic variables, end-of-lifeplanning, and the spiritual dimension.Results: 285 Nursing students with an average age of 23.58 years (SD = 8.19) participated. The scores on theattitude towards euthanasia were higher than the mean. While 70.5 % of the students were aware aboutadvanced planning, only 2.5 % of them had made advanced plans. In religious practice and the spiritualdimension, the average score was high as they considered these elements to be of great support at the end of life.In terms of anxiety about death, the average score was significantly higher in women. Age, spiritual accompanimentand help, and the frequency with which spiritual beliefs are practiced are predictive factors for theattitude towards euthanasia.Conclusions: Students have a positive vision of euthanasia while admitting anxiety about death. They emphasizeadvance planning and greater religious practice as supports for euthanasia. The need for curricular trainingrelated to moral deliberation and values that support euthanasia is clear.
PB Elsevier
SN 0260-6917
YR 2023
FD 2023-02
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10272/22136
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10272/22136
LA eng
NO Ortega-Galán, Á. M., Fernández-Martínez, E., Ibáñez-Masero, O., Ortiz-Amo, R., Gómez-Beltrán, M. de P. A., & Ruíz-Fernández, M. D. (2023). Attitudes of nursing students towards the legalization of euthanasia, end-of-life planning and the spiritual dimension: A quantitative study. In Nurse Education Today (Vol. 124, p. 105770). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2023.105770
NO This work was funded by the call for grants to carry out Research Projects (Modality A) of the University of Huelva [ID: 1076].Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Huelva / CBUA
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 1 jun 2026