Nurses’ Perceptions of Caring for Elderly Patients at University Teaching Hospital’s Adult Hospital and Levy Mwanawasa University Teaching Hospital: Implications for Training

Nurses are key health professionals involved in the frontline care of elderly patients. WHO predicted that the proportion of people aged over 60 years will increase from 11% to 22% between 2000 and 2050. Aligned with this increase in the ageing population is a greater demand for nursing care. Nurses’ perceptions of caring for elderly is of global interest because of many reported negative perceptions and limited number of qualified nurses interested in the field of caring for elderly patients. This study aimed at exploring the nurses’ perceptions of caring for elderly patients at University Teaching Hospital and Levy Mwanawasa University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka. The study used a mixed methods approach. Data were obtained from 148 randomly and 18 purposively sampled nursing staff. Binary Logistic Regression and content analysis of main themes were used to identify factors associated with perceptions of caring for elderly patients. Majority of the nurses (81%) had negative perceptions towards care of elderly patients. There was no statistical significance between social demographic data, knowledge of caring, availability of resources, staffing levels and management support and perceptions of caring for elderly patients. This could have been due to a small sample size which was used. The negative perceptions about caring for elderly patients in this study could be associated with the lack of knowledge specific on care of elderly patients, training units and geriatric specific guidelines for care of elderly patients. Therefore, the nursing curriculum content should be reviewed to include care of elderly patients, guidelines including hospital infrastructure, staffing and equipment friendly to care of elderly patients should be developed.