ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to enable healthcare professionals to gain a greater insight into death anxiety as a contributory factor with regard to occupational stress that is particularly associated with cancer and palliative care. The intention is to chart the evolution of death anxiety and to highlight the unique nature in relation to healthcare professionals of this particular specialty. The approaches to death education have varied enormously over the years, and the chapter analyses them in order to shed light on the path(s) ahead. Death anxiety is defined as a feeling of dread, apprehension or solicitude when one thinks of the process of dying, or ceasing to be or what happens after death. Death is defined as a state of non-being, the termination of biological life. Death anxiety is a complex phenomenon which, although pervasive in wider society, takes on a significantly different character within the arena of cancer and palliative care.
