Nurses caring for older people believe their work carried little professional kudos

Researchers undertook a study to investigate the attitudes of healthcare professionals towards working with older people, including their perception of how other professionals perceived their work in gerontology. They found that nurses caring for older people were enthusiastic and positive in their approach to caring for older people but believed their work carried little professional kudos. This mirrored an earlier study 10 years previously and showed that despite major policy changes attitudes had changed little, which the authors say does not bode well for attracting nurses to a career in gerontology.

Nurses working with older people feel strongly that other healthcare professionals do not appreciate their skills, and that attitude hasn't changed in the past 10 years, according to researchers.

The nurses overwhelmingly viewed caring for older people as an area requiring specialist training but also believed that working conditions were not conducive to recruiting and retaining nursing staff.

The researchers in Scotland compiled the views of more than 500 nurses and compared the answers to research they conducted 10 years previously. The findings were remarkably similar.

Few of the nurses thought that working with older people was depressing and most had made a conscious decision to pursue such a career path.

Most disagreed that communicating with older people could be frustrating or that older people became more 'irritable, touchy and unpleasant'.

The researchers, writing in the journal Nursing Older People, say that the respondents to both studies were consistent 'in their enthusiasm towards the care of older people, even though they viewed working with older people as having a lower professional status than working in other settings'.

They said a decade of major policy changes to include gerontology in pre and post-registration nursing training did not seem to have changed the attitudes towards caring for older people as a specialty.

'Better resources and working conditions were perceived as necessary to influence recruitment of staff into gerontology,' they added.

The lead author is now undertaking an international study with colleagues from Germany, Sweden, Japan, Slovenia and the United States.