Abstract

Objective: The aims of this study were to evaluate medical and nursing students’ approaches to death and to determine their effects on the choice of education field.Method: The Thorson-Powell Death Anxiety Scale, consisting of 25 phrases, was applied to 161 second grade university students who divided into two groups. The health group consisted of medical and nursing students. The control group was composed of environmental engineering, biology, fine arts students. The data has been computerized; for group comparisons chi-square, Student’s t and two-way ANOVA tests were used; frequency and the mean±standard deviation were used for summarizing the data.Results: The death anxiety of women was found to be higher than that of male students in both health and control groups, and this difference is statistically significant .Conclusion: Higher death anxiety may affect the choice of some members of the health profession but there appears to be no relationship between death anxiety and choosing the profession