Introduction:

The medicine degree is a demanding journey of professional training, intensified in the final two years during the internship period. Students are exposed to numerous stressful factors, the most impactful of which is contact with death. Dying involves biological, social, cultural, legal, religious, and historical aspects, but when it comes to medicine, it is considered negligence, a failure caused by the lack of training.

Objective:

To analyze the factors associated with the frame of mind of medical interns towards death.

Methods:

This is an analytical cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach. The research was conducted through questionnaires applied digitally to medicine interns from all over Brazil. The instruments used were a sociodemographic questionnaire and aspects related to living with death and, the other, the Profile Assessment Scale of Attitudes About Death (EAPAM).

Results:

The study sample consisted of 171 medical interns, of which 74.9% were female, 45% were Catholic, and had an average age of 24 years old. In the “fear of death” domain, there was a higher score among Catholic students (p=0.0395), who also did not consider themselves well-prepared to deal with death. For “death avoidance”, there was a higher score among married students (p=0.0147), also those who did not consider themselves prepared to deal with death (p=0.0020). For “escape acceptance”, there was a higher score among Protestant students (p=0.0270), those who reported having attended a patient who died (p=0.0030), and those who stated that they did not consider themselves empathetic (p=0.0261). For “neutral acceptance”, there was a higher score among students adhering to other religions (p=0.0296) and those who claimed to have a homosexual orientation (p=0.0398). For “approach acceptance”, there was a higher score among female students (p=0.0490), married students (p=0.0006), protestant students (p<0.0001), those with strong religious involvement (p<0.0001), and those who treated a patient that died (p = 0.0150).

Conclusion:

Thus, it is concluded that the biopsychosocial approach to death in the academic environment is fundamental, given the evidence found concerning the unpreparedness of medical students during internship in the face of this phenomenon.

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