Nursing students' knowledge, attitude and willingness toward the elderly care: A cross-sectional study

Abstract
Background: China's aging population is accelerating, and a large number of professional nursing talents need to be trained to improve the quality of care for the elderly. However, there is a shortage of elderly caregivers in China. The aim of the study is to investigate higher vocational nursing students' attitudes toward the elderly and knowledge and willingness of geriatric nursing service.
Methods: A total of 1075 nursing students were recruited between December 2019 to January 2020 in University. The nursing students’ basic information, attitude towards the elderly, willingness and knowledge toward elderly care were investigated with a self-designed questionnaire. The correlation between nursing students engaged in elderly service willingness, attitude towards the elderly, and knowledge of aging services were analyzed by Spearman rank correlation coefficient analysis.
Results: 61.0% of the students held negative attitude towards the elderly. 43.6% of the students were willing to engage in elderly nursing work. 76.0% of students generally understand the current state of aging in China. 51.6% of students expect salary to be above 8000 RMB. 49.5% of the students think that the development prospects of elderly care services are very good. The attitude of nursing students was negatively correlated with their willingness(r=-0.081, P=0.012), knowledge was positively correlated with their willingness(r=0.367, P<0.001), but negatively correlated with their attitude(r=-0.083, P=0.010).
Conclusions: Higher vocational nursing students had negative attitudes towards older people, cognition of elderly care service was insufficient, and the willingness to engage in geriatric care services was at the middle and lower levels.

Keywords
Higher vocational; Nursing students; Elderly care; knowledge; Attitude; Willingness

Cite this paper
Siping Wang, Lulu Yan, Shanshan Huang, Yan Li, Xianlong Wang, Nursing students' knowledge, attitude and willingness toward the elderly care: A cross-sectional study , SCIREA Journal of Health. Volume 5, Issue 4, August 2021 | PP. 34-48. 10.54647/pmh33164

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