Development of a provisional geriatric impression and attitude scale for care workers and nursing students in elderly care

24^th World Nursing and Healthcare Conference

September 13-15, 2018 | Copenhagen, Denmark

Taro Kano, Yuki Higuchi, Masako Fukusima and Yu Kiyozuka

Gunma Prefectural College of Health Sciences, Japan

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Adv Practice Nurs

Abstract :

Impressions about the elderly among care workers and nursing students in elderly care affect the quality of the care they provide and their work retention. Scales such as the Fraboni Scale of Ageism and the Facts on Aging Quiz have been developed with the aim of measuring such impressions. However, these scales are focused on evaluating prejudice or stereotypes and lack items for evaluating positive impressions. Therefore, we are currently developing a geriatric impression and attitude scale with the aim of evaluating positive impressions. For development of the scale, a questionnaire survey using the sentence completion method about the elderly�??s ways of living, personality, and relationships with society was conducted with 95 nursing students. Furthermore, focus group interviews were conducted with nursing faculty. Results of the questionnaire survey and interviews were categorized by similarity of the response contents. The results showed that the respondents admired the elderly�??s motivations for living, their rich experiences, and kindness. Also, they felt warmly about the elderly�??s smiles and humor, atmosphere, and consideration for others. Negative impressions of the elderly included rigidity/stubbornness, selfcenteredness, and introversion. Based on the responses, we created a questionnaire with 50 provisional items such as �??I like talking with elderly people,�?� �??their faces with wrinkles are charming,�?� �??it can�??t be helped that you become more rigid/stubborn when you get old,�?� and �??I�??m not good at casually talking with the elderly.�?� We plan to conduct a large-scale survey to test the scale�??s reliability and validity.

Biography :

Taro Kano obtained his PhD Degree from Gunma University, Maebashi, Japan (2012). He is currently a Professor of Gunma Prefectural College of Health Sciences, School of Nursing, Japan. He is interested in Nursing Education and Geriatric Nursing.