Nursing Students’ Attitudes Towards the Elderly

Aim: It is important for nursing students to have positive attitude towards elderly in order toimprove quality of care in later years. This study was conducted to determine the attitudes ofnursing students towards elderly.Material and Methods: The population of the study that had a descriptive design wascomposed of nursing students of a university. Sample consisted of 432 students. Data wascollected by a questionnaire and attitude towards elder people scale. Number, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t test and one-way variance analysis and Tukey test were used inthe analysis of data.Results: The students’ mean age was 20.4 ± 1.6 while 84.3 % were female, 35.2 % were firstgrade students. Mean score of the students obtained from attitude towards elder peoplescale was 121.1 ± 10.7. It was found that attitudes toward the elderly scale mean scores ofthe students who live with an old person in their houses, care for old family members, andinteract with old people everyday were higher and the difference between the groups wasstatistically significant (p 0.05).Conclusion: It was determined that nursing student’s attitude towards elders was generallypositive, however, positive attitude was at a low level. In order to increase and maintainpositive attitude towards elders, giving more place to issues and practices regarding withgeriatrics and geriatric patient care in the content of undergraduate education program, andencouraging the students to participate in activities that will raise awareness about elderlycare, organizing programs about geriatric nursing during undergraduate and graduatenursing education program.