The effect of a well-dying education program on college students' perception of death and well-dying

This study was a quasi-experimental research to confirm the effect of a well-dying education program on the perception of death and well-dying among college students. It was intended to provide basic data for the development of well-dying education programs targeting youth. The study design was a two-group pre-post design, and the participants of the study were 55 nursing students and 52 non-nursing students from one university. The data was collected from October 4 to October 11, 2021, once a week for 1 hour for 2 weeks and analyzed using paired t-test and repeated measured ANOVA using the SPSS 26.0 program. The participants showed a significant decrease in 'Anxiety of death', and 'Denial of death'. A well-dying education program's beneficial effect significantly improves 'Interest of death', 'Positive of death', ' Will to respect life', and 'Perception of Well-dying' in the participants. In addition, by group differences, nursing students had ‘Interest of death’, ‘Positive of death’, and ‘Will to respect life’ and ‘Perception of Well-dying’ had a significant effect on improvement. College students in other majors had ‘Denial of death’, ‘Interest of death’, and ‘Positive of death’ had significant effects. Based on this study, the well-dying education program can be expanded and applied to college students, which can be used to change the perception of death and well-dying among them positively.