Evaluation of nursing education in relation to the health care of the elderly

During the last decades there was a dramatic increase of the population of older people, a fact that creates new challenges and requirements to health care services all around the world. Nurses are the main profession that care for older people, therefore nursing science worldwide studies and applies changes in order to respond to the needs of older people. For that reason nursing curricula have been adapting in order to include topics related to ageing and older people, while at the same time specialisation programmes in gerontological nursing are developing. Attitudes change towards older people, through education, is a factor that has been studied extensively on how they can affect the inclination of nurses to work with this age group, but also in the provision of quality care, while knowledge is also promoted not only through theoretical education but also through appropriate clinical practice. In this article, the tools that have been developed internationally for the evaluation of attitudes and knowledge in relation to older people are presented and discussed. These could be used in order to evaluate nursing education for its potential to prepare professionals equipped to respond to the specific health care needs of this age group. In Greece there already have been relevant changes in undergraduate curricula, but so far there is no reported evaluation of them in order to find out if they are suitable for responding to the needs of older people.

Category: Volume 46, N 4
Hits: 694 Hits
Created Date: 15-12-2007
Authors: Ekaterini Lambrinou , Panayota Sourtzi