Abstract:

University training is the most important period to develop skills and abilities necessary in the future nursing professional in charge of caring for the person at any stage of life. The attitude of the Nursing staff is considered fundamental because the users who go to the health services feel safer not only because of the care they receive but also because of the attitudes they perceive from the care staff towards them. Taking into account that the attitude is the learned predisposition of acceptance or rejection of an object, various studies report that Nursing students have attitudes of moderate indifference and slight rejection towards the care of the elderly; however, few studies have been found that explore the causes associated with these attitudes. Therefore, the objective of the study was to determine the impact of nursing teaching practice on attitudes towards the care of the elderly.

in November 2020, an observational correlational study was carried out and using a Likert-type scale managed through Google Forms, nursing students from a public university in Peru were surveyed (80.1% were women). The population was 468 and the calculated sample size was 176 and an intentional non-probabilistic sampling was used to guarantee similar proportions between years of study. The reliability of the scale was determined by Cronbach's alpha (0.907). To determine the attitudes, an Osgood semantic differential scale was used that includes 5 dimensions (physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual) and each dimension includes 4 factors (familiarity, evaluative, power and action); so that, the higher the score, the student presents more favorable attitudes towards the care of the elderly. For the bivariate analysis, the Mann-Whitney U test was used, with a significance level of 0.05.

It was found that 80.1% were women, 43.7% were between 20 and 22 years old and 52.8% presented an attitude of indifference towards the care of the elderly. In the bivariate analysis, it was found that students who prefer to dedicate themselves to the care of the elderly at the end of their studies present higher scores on the total scale of attitudes and in 4 of the 5 dimensions. Regarding the teaching practice of Nursing, the university students who took a course on adult care (theory) had a higher score for attitudes only in the mental dimension; while the students who during their clinical practice had cared for an elderly adult had a higher attitude score both in the mental and emotional dimension; these differences were statistically significant. On the other hand, it was found that there is no difference in the score of attitudes among students who live with an older adult in their home. The results suggest that Nursing teaching practice promotes favorable attitudes towards the care of the elderly in terms of mental and emotional aspects. In the Nursing curriculum, it is required to incorporate educational strategies to promote favorable attitudes towards the care of the elderly, in the physical, social and spiritual dimensions.

Keywords:

Student, nursing, attitudes, elderly, care.