Factor Analysis of Acute Ward Nurses’ Concepts of Life and Death

Background: The Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications announced that the proportion of elderly people aged 65 or over in the total population of Japan reached a record high of 26.7% in the present Japan. Aims: This paper aimed to clarify from acute ward nurses’ concepts of life and death in Japan. Methods: Questionnaires were distributed to 720 nurses working in acute care hospital A in the Kansai area in Japan. Distribution destinations were all wards except for operating rooms and outpatient clinics. We initially classified the 27 items from Hirai et al.’s death and life scale into the initial seven factors (via promax rotation). Operational Definition: In my analysis, I relied considerably on the seven-point Likert scale of the Concept of life and death. Ethical Considerations: The present study was approved by the Tottori University Ethics Review Committee (1603 A 156). Results: The initial factor analysis revealed that 10 of the 27 items were inadequate. Thus, a second analysis was conducted on the remaining 17 items. The KMO analysis produced a value of 0.8. A Bartlett’s test produced a significant result (p u003c 0.001), and Cronbach’s α was 0.8, which was the result obtained during initial scale validity checks. The present analysis led to the extraction of 4 factors with eigenvalues greater than 1, with a cumulative contribution rate of 62.8%. Consideration: The first factor comprised all subscales except for the “death avoidance” subscale, which fit better within the fourth factor. These factors included “A comprehensive view of life and death” “Sharing the fate of death and liberation” “Death fear, anxiety, and avoidance”, and “Liberation from life and a world after death”.