ATTITUDES AND STEREOTYPES - NURSES WORK WITH OLDER-PEOPLE

The study reported here sought to describe the differences between nur ses' attitudes towards work with older people in the collective sense and their attitudes towards the individuals with whom they work, A con venience sample of 136 community nurses was obtained. Data were collec ted by means of a questionnaire incorporating the report of two critic al incidents - one of effective practice and one of ineffective practi ce with older people. In addition in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 22 respondents. The findings lead the authors to chall enge the common assumption that an identified lack of desire in nurses to work with older people is due solely to negative attitudes which n urses hold towards older people themselves. The paper concludes that t he high dependency levels of older people and structure of nursing wor k with older people in hospitals means that fewer nurses make this are a a positive career choice.