Nurses' Attitudes Toward Older Patients in Acute Care in Israel

Abstract

Ageism has been found to negatively affect the health care services that older persons receive, both implicitly through unfair resource allocation by the stakeholders, and explicitly, by providing offensive and poor quality treatment. In this article, the authors review the literature relating to ageing, noting that negative attitudes among caregivers toward older patients in acute care settings are a strong predictor of ageism. They describe a study in which they explored a group of Israeli nurses’ knowledge of ageing and attitudes toward older people in an acute care setting and analyzed the relationship between these variables using a descriptive, correlational design method. Nurses working in one of the largest public hospital in Israel completed Kogan’s Attitudes Towards Older People Scale and Palmore’s Facts on Ageing Quiz. Findings indicated that the nurses’ level of knowledge of ageing was relatively low. The authors discuss nurses’ knowledge of ageing and nurses’ ethnicity as significant predictors of ageist attitudes. They conclude by recommending that nurse educators strengthen gerontological content in the nursing curriculum and provide culturally tailored nursing education to reduce ageism among professional nurses.