Abstract

Investigating the relationship between ageism and some demographic aspects in offering nursing care to elder patients of Al-zahra hospital, Isfahan

Objective and domain: patient care quality is influenced by many factors one of which can be nurse’s attitude toward the elderly. The present study conducted aiming at specifying the relationship between ageism and some demographic aspects of nursing care toward elder patients hospitalized at Alzahra hospital. Method: the present study is a co relational descriptive research. The statistical population includes all nurses who work in different units of Alzahra hospital of Isfahan (except those working in pediatric and NICU units, as they have no contact with elder patients) in 2015. Through availability sampling 275 nurses were selected; 93 male and182 female nurses. Instrument of this study was a questionnaire on ageism designed by researcher. In order for analyzing the data, the researcher used independent T test, variance analysis test and Cross call Valise test. Findings: in investigating knowledge related to elder people, findings of this study shows that this knowledge was in a low level in 11.6 % of nurses and high in 32.7% of them. Attitudes toward elder patients were in 8.4%of nurses negative in 81.8% of them neuter and 9.8% of nurses have got positive attitudes toward the elderly. Also results demonstrated that this attitude was meaningfully more negative in male nurses than females. But in other aspects like age, educational level, income, educational time, ethnicity, living with elderly people and presence of an elder person in their family or relatives, no meaningful difference was seen. Discussion and conclusion: In general, this study showed that sex, occupational record, having passed educational term time are factors influencing ageism. But other demographic characteristics played no meaningful role in nurses’ ageism and these are to be paid more attention in order to decrease ageism.

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