Can an Elective Geriatric Nursing Course Change Nursing Students' Attitudes and Willingness in Caring for the Elderly? A Quasi-Experimental Design Study

Abstract

Introduction:The elderly population is rapidly growing, and healthcare professionals are currently providing increased care for the elderly. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of an elective geriatric nursing course on the attitude of students toward the elderly and students' willingness to work with them.Materials and Method: This study was a quasi-experimental. Pretest-posttest design was used. The sample comprised 108 nursing students (46 of the students were educated in an elective geriatric nursing course, 62 were educated in an elective emergency and surgery nursing course). The Student Information Form and Kogan's Attitudes Towards Old People Scale were used. Value, average, percentage frequency distribution, paired t tests, independent t test, McNemar's test, and chi-square test were used.Results: Students who participated in the elective geriatric nursing course developed more positive and less negative attitudes toward the elderly after the course in comparison with students who participated in the elective emergency and surgery nursing course.Conclusion: It is important that the curriculum of the geriatric nursing course should create awareness and knowledge in students regarding care of and attitudes toward the elderly. Adopting a more positive and less negative attitude ensures a higher quality care for the elderly. There is a need to revise the nursing curriculum and develop innovative schemes that will increase the students' willingness to work with the elderly.

Instrument Evaluation: Attitudes Toward Older Adults and Intent to Work in Geriatrics

“…That caring for older adults is one of the least desired career choices among nursing students is a global phenomenon (Dai et al, 2020;Hsieh & Chen, 2019). In Malaysia, knowledge of older adults did not translate to intention (Che et al, 2018), which was also true in Sri Lanka (Rathnayake et al, 2016), Taiwan (Hsieh & Chen, 2019), China (Cheng et al, 2020), Portugal (Paulo de Almeida Tavares et al, 2014) and Turkey (Akpinar Soylemez et al, 2018). Thus, nursing programs must nurture the development of positive attitudes toward older adults and foster an intent to work with this population.…”

Nursing students' willingness to work in geriatric care: An integrative review

“…In Akpinar Soylemez et al. ( 2018 ), no statistical differences were found regarding students’ willingness to work with older people before and after the students’ taking an elective geriatric nursing course and an elective emergency and surgery nursing course. Cheng et al.…”

“…Concerning educational level, although some researchers have explored various courses and training programmes in recent years, many studies (Akpinar Soylemez et al., 2018 ; Che et al., 2018 ; Cheng et al., 2020 ; Lamet et al., 2011 ) have failed to find significant differences compared with the control groups or show significant improvements in students’ willingness to work with older people, thus indicating that more efficient educational strategies should be explored.…”

The Effect of Geriatric Nursing Course on Determining Attitudes Towards the Elderly

“…In the research, it was observed that, before the KOPS pre-test, students provided predominantly positive responses to questions regarding knowledge and attitudes about old age. In studies examining how geriatric nursing course affects the attitude towards the elderly in our country, it has been observed that students mostly give positive answers to similar questions and their attitudes towards the elderly are positive [13][14][15][16] . This situation can be attributed to the cultural characteristics in our country.…”