EMTs' Attitudes' toward Death before andafter a Death Education Program

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 andCrisis 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.