ABSTRACT
Background: In this era of advanced medicine, significant association between negative attitudes of health workers related to suicide has been found, which may be attributed to inadequate quality of health workers towards patient care. Nursing personnel being first level contacts with regards to suicide prevention, they play an important role in suicide risk assessment and management. However, knowledge about these issues is very limited, especially among nursing students in India. Aims: The present study is aimed to asses attitudes related to suicide among nursing students studying in Sajjalashree Institute of Nursing Sciences, Bagalkot. Methodology: In the Covid-19 era, the study conducted was an online survey, using the Google forms. A survey link was circulated using WhatsApp. The survey questionnaire included of specifically designed socio demographic proforma to collect sociodemographic data and Suicide opinion questionnaire was administered to assess their attitude towards suicidal patients. First 150 responses were recorded and Data was analyzed using SPSS software. Results: Majority of study participants were single females (61.3%) coming from rural locality with mean age of 21 years. Only few had previous exposure to psychiatric posting or suicide prevention programmes. 76.9% of respondents held an uncertain attitude towards patients presenting with deliberate self-harm, 15.3% had a favourable attitude and 7.6% had a negative attitude. Conclusion: Uncertain attitude was seen in two thirds of among most of the statements while favourable attitude was seen only among one third of the attitudinal statement.