Geriatric staff attitudes toward death

Abstract

Multiple educational approaches to the subject of hospital staff attitudes toward death were tested. It was not known which approaches, if any, would work, and it is still not known if one is better than another. The staff's resistance to discussing the topic of death seemed connected with a culturally-induced denial. Attempts to promote academic discussion failed. Not until situations occurred which provoked emotional involvement - an actual death, the staging of psychodrama involving death, seminars on religion and psychiatry, and attendance at an autopsy - could the staff members begin to understand their own feelings and open the way for true communication with their patients.