Nurses' Attitudes Toward Aging and Older Adults

Abstract

Data from an applied research project on ageism among health professionals were used to examine nurses' attitudes toward aging and working with older adults. Nurses were compared with groups of other health professionals, and sources of variation within the nurses (e.g., employer, work setting, gerontology education) were examined. Nurses had less accurate knowledge of aging than other health professionals. Nurses expressed higher anxiety about aging and were more likely to believe working with older adults was associated with low esteem in the profession. Nurses were more likely to hold positive attitudes if they worked for a service provider rather than an employment agency, had gerontology education, and worked outside the residential care sector. Improving education in gerontology is an important strategy in improving the attitudes of the profession toward older adults and could help to address nursing shortages in this sector.

Influence of nurses' knowledge of ageing and attitudes towards older people on therapeutic interactions in emergency care: A literature review

“…The articles included in this review consisted of seven quantitative studies using cross-sectional surveys or audits [5,6,[12][13][14][15][16], seven qualitative studies that utilised interviews and/or focus groups or observational methods [3,[17][18][19][20][21][22], and two mixed-method studies [23,24]. Not all the studies were conducted exclusively on participants from EDs.…”

“…Not all the studies were conducted exclusively on participants from EDs. Three studies focused on ED nurses or patients [17,18,20], and others were focused on acute-care or general-ward settings [3,5,6,12,14,16,19,[21][22][23][24] or were reviews of education and/or patient files [13,15]. The search results are presented in Table 1.…”

“…Multiple studies documented emergency nurses' knowledge of olderperson nursing and the impact of inadequate gerontological knowledge [3,5,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][22][23][24]. Factors influencing nurses' attitudes to older people and the impact of nurses' attitudes on older people were also frequently reported [3,6,[13][14][15]17,19,21,22,24] …”

“…Nurses working in the ED may find older patients challenging to manage due to a lack of specialised training in gerontology [12,14,15,18]. Technical tasks may take precedence for acute-care nurses rather than basic nursing care and/or psychosocial care, but provision of these types of care allows the patient to feel [6] Attitudes and practices among health services providers in Australia Quantitative Nurses, n = 205; physicians, n = 298; other, n = 86; direct care, n = 133. RR: 13% from residential aged-care facilities to 70% for aged-care assessments services to acute-care nurses.…”

“…A deficit of gerontology skills or lack of understanding of the ageing process can have a negative influence on Emergency Department (ED) nurses' attitudes towards older people [5,6] and the quality of care provided. Therefore, nurses play a vital role in contributing to a positive experience and healthy outcomes for older adults in emergency care settings.…”