The Understanding of Human Death by Polish Early Career Pre-Specialist Physicians

Despite the legal classification of cerebral death as the actual death of a human being and the continuous clarification of neurological criteria, the subject of death, particularly, when exactly it occurs, has been the subject of debate not only in the medical environment but also in other scientific communities for over sixty years. This issue is also present in social discourse. In Poland, as well as in other countries, the concepts of “death” and “cerebral death” have a legal basis. Considerations devoted to death are also important for tanatopedagogics, which focuses primarily on mortality. Indeed, the quality of relationships with other people depends to a large extent on the awareness of death. The study involved 113 pre-specialist physicians employed in various medical centers in Poland. An original questionnaire was used to study the understanding of human death in the light of legal and medical acts that came into force between 2007 and 2019. The study showed that only 7.08% of pre-specialist physicians could fully and correctly identify the basis for declaring a patient dead after diagnosing the irreversible cessation of brain function, and only 33.63% of all respondents understood death in accordance with legal acts currently in force in Poland. Moreover, nearly half of the study participants (47.79%) indicated that irreversible loss of consciousness is not adequate grounds for determining a patient’s death, while 56.64% felt that cerebral death is equal to the biological death of a human being. Women were significantly more likely to understand the concept of death (p = 0.028) as defined by current documents and to perceive the irreversible loss of consciousness as an insufficient basis for determining a patient’s death (p = 0.040) and also to correctly indicate on what basis cerebral death is identified with human death (p = 0.003), as expressed by current legal regulations in Poland.