Attitudes and behaviours of nurses towards the elderly in an acute care setting

The study was designed to determine the attitudes of health care workers towards the elderly in acute care settings and to investigate variations in types of interaction between staff and elderly patients. A questionnaire and Kogan's Old People Scale were used together with direct non-participant observation of nurse-patient interaction. The questionnaire was completed by 50 registered nurses, 20 nursing aides, four degree nurses and eight volunteers. Of the four groups, the volunteers showed the most favourable attitudes, the registered nurses and degree nurses were virtually tied and the nursing aides were lower in the rating. Staff who expressed a preference for working in geriatrics and rehabilitation had a high correlation on the Kogan's Old People Scale: (r(77) = 0.38, P less than 0.01) and (r(77) = 0.32, P less than 0.01) respectively. It was also found that those who rated basic care as lower in importance to patient well-being than, for example, talking to patients, were more positive than were those who rated basic care higher in importance. In the second data collection, 47 female patients (mean age = 67.4 years) and 43 male patients (mean age = 71.5 years) were observed. It was found that 74% of patients spent almost 95% of their time inactively, either in bed or sitting in a chair. Neither age nor mental alertness relates to activity level, but mental alertness was found to be related to engaging in constructive activities. During the observation periods 41% of the patients did not interact with staff.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)