Attitude of the Nursing and Midwifery Students of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences towards Euthanasia

Euthanasia has been the most controversial topic for more than 3,000 years and is among important issues in medical ethics in today’s world, having something to do with the value system of human life.

The aim of this study was conducted in Nasibeh Nursing and Midwifery Faculty of the city of Sari in 2016 to investigate attitudes of the senior students of nursing and midwifery towards euthanasia.

This descriptive study involved 200 senior college nursing and midwifery students (119 nursing and 81 midwifery students) of Nasibeh Nursing and Midwifery Faculty in the city of Sari, who participated on census sampling. The attitude of nurses and midwives was investigated through the Euthanasia Attitude Scale (EAS). To analyze the data, the distribution values, mean and SD were gained through descriptive statistics. To assess significant relationship between attitude to euthanasia and the integrated variables and the classified variables, Pearson linear correlation and Chi Square tests were used, respectively. Significant difference was considered with the P value less than 0.05.

Mean total score of attitudes towards euthanasia was 58.43±12.80 and on the whole, 19.5% of the students had negative attitude, 69.5% had neutral attitude and 11% had positive attitude towards euthanasia. There was no significant relationship between the scores of the nursing and midwifery students’ attitude towards euthanasia and only the gender variable had significant relationship with scores of different classes of attitude towards euthanasia (p<0.05). Compared to the female students, male students were more positive towards euthanasia. Furthermore, reversed significant relationship was observed between age and the score of attitudes towards euthanasia (p<0.05).

There are many factors that can affect attitude of individuals on euthanasia. Results of presence student showed that though majority of the participants were neutral towards euthanasia, such factors as age and sex of individuals were among variables related to attitude towards euthanasia