The effects of nurses' attitudes towards elderly on caring behaviors

This study was planned to be carried out with descriptive method in order to evaluate the effects of nurses' attitudes towards elderly people on caring behaviors. The study was carried out between May 2018 and November 2018 with 400 nurses accepting to participate in the study and working in the university and public hospitals in Tekirdağ. The data were obtained by face-to-face interview method using the "Questionnaire on Socio-demographic Characteristics and Views on Elderly Care", "Ageism Attitude Scale" and "Caring Behaviors Scale". In the evaluation of the data, percentage, mean, Mann–Whitney test, Kruskal Wallis-H test and correlation analysis were used. The mean age of the nurses who participated in our study was 33.36±7.53 years, and 86.2% were women, 65.5% were married, 94.7% lived in a nuclear family and 41% were high school graduates. 59.7% of the participating nurses lived in the same house with the elderly, and 80.5% of them gave care to the elderly people in their working life. 84.5% of the participants stated that the insufficiency in the number of staff affected the elderly care, and 72.7% stated that the topics related to the elderly care were not sufficient in the trainings. The mean total score obtained from Ageism Attitude Scale (AAS) was 75.56±10.61, and the mean total score obtained from Caring Behaviors Scale-24 (CBS-24) was 4.96±0.57. Both scale and sub-dimension scores were not affected by gender and family type (p>0.05). A statistically significant difference was found between the nurses' living in the same house with the elderly, education on giving care to the elderly and nursing or receiving in-service training for elderly care by nurses and AAS and CBS-24 total and sub-dimension scores (p<0.05). There was a statistically significant relationship between AAS and CBS-24 total scores in the same direction (p<0.05). As a result of the study, it can be stated that the positive attitude towards the elderly will also positively affect the caring behaviors. Keywords: Nursing, old age, ageism, nursing care