Self-Reported Fears by Hospice Patients at the End of Life

Fear is a common emotion that involves the intense anticipation of threat to a person. At end of life, this fear is often conceptualized as existential distress, which suggests a connection to spirituality. Processing impending death is essential to end-of-life closure and acceptance. Existing evidence suggests that spirituality is associated with greater coping, better psychosocial well-being, and dignified dying; however, the relationship between fear and spirituality at end of life, as well as the specific fears experienced, are not known. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between fear and spirituality in patients upon hospice admission. In this retrospective study, admission records from 154 hospice patients were reviewed. Hospice admission data from the psychosocial and spiritual assessments were analyzed using descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, and logistic regression. The average patient age was 81 years of age. A slight majority (51.3%) of patients admitted to fears upon hospice admission. Patients reported a range of one to six fears, with the most common fear being “pain and/or suffering.” Forty-seven percent of the patients identified as being “spiritually active.” Correlation analysis revealed no statistically significant relationship between fear and spiritually. Logistic regression analysis revealed some significant relationships between age and certain fears. Fear is a common symptom at the end of life, and appropriate emotional and psychological support should be provided to mitigate the fears. This study suggests that fears may be different for older adults.

Školstvo i hrvatski jezik u BIH s posebnim osvrtom na udžbenike hrvatskog jezika i književnosti

The post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina, state community in which the war stopped at the end of 1995, has many unsolved questions, many problems in all the segments of life, just like in the area of education. With regard to complex traditional, religious and national structure and everything which was a consequence of life in such society, it is hard, but inevitable, to arrange, plan and conduct affairs from different areas of the society and state immediately after the conflict. However, when peace was restored by the intercession of the international community, all aspects of life were being consolidated gradually, at one level, and among them educational system at all the levels. With regard to changed social circumstances, new state organization and forming of government, with all constitutional principles and legal regulation, it was hard to establish normal flows in society. In the same way it was complicated to organize education as the society activity especially because of different national, political, traditional and language interests of nations in BiH. However, despite all difficulties and interruptions certain solutions were made in education in order that every constitutive nation in BiH has its own system, which is, in contact with others, completed in the arranged reciprocity and active correlation, making a common complex educational system in BiH. On that basis, regardless of all the attempts of unitarianism from bigger nations, and regardless of weaker position of the Croatian nation in the government bodies, from which many negative consequences emerged, it gains the right to official usage of its own language in education and all other segments. In that way the Croats will, in their own language, make the textbooks and other literature as the basis of educational process, which will, through democratic procedures, with regard to both home and foreign circumstances and harmonization by the European standards, completely come closer to the European education system.