ArticleFrontiers in medicine2026
Professional death avoidance and associated factors among intensive care unit nurses in China: a multicenter cross-sectional study.
Article in Frontiers in medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Nurses in intensive care units (ICUs) frequently encounter patient death, ethical dilemmas, and emotionally demanding clinical situations. These experiences may be associated with emotional exhaustion, moral distress, and professional death avoidance. Professional death avoidance refers to a work-context-specific tendency to distance oneself from death-related professional situations, including communication, care tasks, emotional engagement, and reflection related to patient death. Understanding the current status of professional death avoidance and its associated factors is important for developing supportive strategies in critical care settings. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the current status of professional death avoidance among ICU nurses and to examine its associations with emotional exhaustion, moral distress, and demographic and occupational characteristics. Methods: A multicenter cross-sectional study was conducted from September to October 2025 among 367 registered nurses from three tertiary hospitals in Sichuan Province, China. Participants completed validated questionnaires assessing professional death avoidance, emotional exhaustion, moral distress, and demographic and occupational characteristics. ICU work experience, job satisfaction, education level, monthly income, religious belief, ethics training, and family support were analyzed as potential associated factors. The Job Demands-Resources Model was used as a conceptual framework for variable selection and interpretation, rather than as an empirically tested theoretical model. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, univariate tests, Spearman rank correlation analysis, and exploratory stepwise multiple linear regression. Results: The mean professional death avoidance score was 38.26 ± 15.75. Univariate analysis showed significant differences in professional death avoidance scores according to ICU work experience, education level, monthly income, religious belief, ethics training, family support, and job satisfaction ( Conclusion: ICU nurses in China reported a moderate level of professional death avoidance. Shorter ICU work experience, lower job satisfaction, higher emotional exhaustion, and higher moral distress were statistically associated with higher levels of professional death avoidance. These findings suggest that professional death avoidance may be related to both emotional depletion and ethical strain in ICU practice. Supportive workplace strategies addressing psychological well-being, moral distress, job satisfaction, and coping resources may help improve nurses' engagement in death-related and end-of-life care, but longitudinal and intervention studies are needed to clarify causal relationships and evaluate intervention effectiveness.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.