Attitudes of Namik Kemal University Medical Faculty Students towards ageism and related factors

The study was conducted in order to determine the attitudes of the students of Namık Kemal University Faculty of Medicine towards the ageism and the factors affecting these attitudes. The research population consisted of a total of 623 students including in the Faculty of Medicine, first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth grade.In the research, it was aimed to reach 80% of the medical faculty students who were not selected as a sample and totally 492 students (female: 259, male: 229) were included in the research. The sociodemographic charateristics of the students and the personal data form of the emotions, thoughts and behaviorsa of older individuals were used as independent variables of the study. As the dependent variables of the study, "Ageism Attitude Scale" (AAS) total and sub-dimension scores were used. In the analysis of research data; mean, median, standard deviation, percentage, t test, One-way Anova, Kruskal Wallis and Mann Whitney U tests were used. AAS total score median of the research group was found to be 83.00. With the average and median scores of AAS, which determines the attitudes of the students towards the ageism;the difference between the education class, the living with the elderly so far and the people who want to work with the elderly after the graduation were statistically determined significant (p <0.05). As a result, it has been determined that students have a positive attitude towards elderly discrimination. In the study, suggestions have been developed for the factors affecting the attitudes of the medical faculty students towards the elderly discrimination. Key Words: Elderly, aging, ageism, medical faculty students, ageism and attitudes.