EMTs' attitudes' toward death before and after a death education program

Abstract

Objective: To test the hypothesis that emergency medical technicians' (EMTs') attitudes toward death will change after exposure to a death education program.

Methods: A convenience sample of 83 rural EMTs participated in this pretest-posttest study after exposure to an educational program related to death. Intact groups of EMTs were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. The short-intervention group received a two-hour class solely on making death notifications. The long-intervention group received a 16-hour, two-day workshop based on the Emergency Death Education and Crisis Training (EDECT(SM)) program. The control group received a program about toxicology. Each participant completed a questionnaire with items structured in a Likert five-point format with "strongly agree" and "strongly disagree" as the anchors.

Results: Before the training programs, most (77%) participants reported that an EMT's actions impact the family's grief. Less than half (43%) reported that an EMT's role should include making a death notification. The majority (84%) reported that their training was inadequate to make a death notification or to help the family with their grief. Most (84%) felt uncomfortable making a death notification. Those EMTs in the long-intervention group were significantly more likely (92%) to feel that their training was adequate after the intervention when compared with those EMTs in the short-intervention group (43%) or those in the control group (21%).

Conclusion: The data showed that EMTs' attitudes toward death changed after exposure to a training program about death.