Nurses' attitudes toward the obstacles in their relationships with elderly patients

Abstract

Background: The rapid pace of elderly population growth and higher hospitalization of them has raised the need for an
efficient relation between the nurses and elderly patients to promote their health. As there are some obstacles in nurses'
relation with elderly patients, this study was implemented to clear nurses’ viewpoints in order to familiar them how to
remove these barriers. The present study has been conducted to find out nurses' attitude toward obstacles in nurseelderly
relations.
Methods: It was a descriptive study. The studied population was comprised of all nurses working in medical surgical
wards of Isfahan Medical University hospitals. The 110 subjects were selected by simple random sampling. Data were
collected by a questionnaire consisting of four sections and totally 54 closed questions. The data was analyzed descriptively
and by binomial test through SPSS software.
Results: The most frequent cited nurse related obstacle was tiredness (89.8%) while the most frequent cited elder's
+related obstacles (from nurses' viewpoints) was forgetfulness (92.6%). The most frequent cited institutional obstacle
was the existence of critical patients in the ward (97.2%).
Conclusion: The related authorities should have a deeper look at nurses' working condition and try to amend environmental
obstacles in their work place. Educational courses on aging related changes and also on nurse-elderly relations
should be held for nursing students as well as working nurses.
Key words: Nurses, elderly patients, relation obstacles.