Korean Japanese Association

BackgroundVarious factors have been found to be associated with high levels of death anxiety experienced by oncology nurses. The aim of this study was to use a person-oriented approach to examine the death anxiety patterns of Chinese oncology nurses and to analyze the differences in anxiety characteristics and their associated influencing factors.MethodsA cross-sectional survey regarding palliative care among registered oncology nurses was conducted in Jiangsu Province, China.Latent class analyses was applied to identify their patterns of death anxiety. The score of PCQN-C (The Chinese version of the Palliative Care Quiz for Nursing) and FATCOD-B-C (The Chinese version of the Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying scale), the demographic and working characteristics were further analyzed through covariance analysis (ANCOVA) and multivariate (or logistic) regression across the subgroups.ResultsA two-potential-category model was selected based on the fit index. The results showed that 79% of oncology nurses belonged to the high pressure and pain group and 21% belonged to the low death anxiety group. The high pressure and pain group had significantly higher scores in the dimensions of emotion, stress and pain, time awareness, and cognition compared to the low death anxiety group. Factors influencing the high pressure and pain group included shorter working years, non-national or provincial oncology nursing specialists, non-national palliative care specialists, never discussing the topic of death with patients or family members, no palliative care related training, and PCQN and FATCOD scores.ConclusionsOur study suggests that oncology nurses’ death anxiety can be divided into two categories: low death anxiety and high stress pain, and certain factors, such as being female, having a short work experience, and lacking palliative care-related training, increase the likelihood of death anxiety.

Nurses, such as clinical research coordinators (CRCs) and nursing staff, are playing a greater role in clinical trials. Prior studies show that CRCs face various challenges, yet information on the problems nursing staff encounter in phase 1 oncology trials is limited. The purpose of the present study was to explore using a qualitative and descriptive approach the difficulties that nursing staff experience in their work with phase 1 oncology trials. Twenty-one nurses from 2 hospital wards in Japan with phase 1 oncology trials completed semistructured interviews. The data were analyzed qualitatively and descriptively. The results show that nursing staff were expected to take on broader roles as specialists in clinical trial nursing. These expectations led to 3 categories of difficulties: caring for patients, conducting accurate and reliable clinical trials, and collaborating with the clinical trial team. In some cases, these had a negative effect on nurses' attitudes toward clinical trials. Nursing staff face unique difficulties, including a lack of clearly defined responsibilities and recognition from the clinical trial team. These differ from difficulties in ordinary oncology nursing and are similar to those encountered by CRCs. The clinical trial team should reinforce the need for a collaborative approach, provide education and support for nursing staff, and recognize the critical role nurses play as specialists. These steps are important for the well-being of patients and the conduct of high-quality clinical trials.