Attitudes of students towards ageism

This study was conducted in order to determine the attitude of the nursing students those study at University of Gazi, Hacettepe, Ankara and Gülhane Military Medical Academy (GMMA) about the ageism. It was aimed to enroll all of the 3 and 4th year students of the school listed above for the study and 495 students were included the study. Questionnaire form and ?Ageism Attitude Scale? (AAS) were used for collecting the data (Cronbach Alpha Reability Coefficient 0.80). Questions were about the socio-demographic of the students, their thougth about the old age, to live with old people, clinical experiences with old people and their education level about the care of the old people. The collected data was processed in SPSS 12.0 and was analyzed with levels of median, maximum and minimum values, numbers, Kruskall-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U test. Median of the AAS was found 87.0 in this study. Year of the study, age, to live with the old people, to care the old people during the clinical practice and desirous to care the old people after the graduation were determined stastistically important for determinig the attitude of the students related with the ageism (p<0.05). As a result, we stated that students have had positive attitude for the ageism.Key words: old people, ageism, student nurse, attitudes towards ageism.