Nurse's Attitude Toward the Aged: Relationship to Nursing Care

Abstract

The articles prior to January 2008 are part of the back file collection and are not available with a current paid subscription. To access the article, you may purchase it or purchase the complete back file collection here Jean Hatton "Nurse's attitudes have been measured in many ways and about many things. The nurse's attitude toward psychiatric patients, the alcoholic, and the aged have been documented. Kiddler and Campbell define attitude as "a host of seemingly unrelated terms such as acquired drive, belief, conditioned reflex, fixation, judgment, stereotype, valence, to mention only a few, are functionally synonymous with the concept of attitude. All describe the residues of past experience which are the stuff of which attitudes are made. They are the underlying processes, or the behavioral manifestations of underlying processes, which are products of learning."1 Why is so much emphasis placed on "the nurse's attitude"? Does the nurse's attitude affect the nurse's response to the patient's needs? Cook and Seltiz1 define attitude as "an underlying disposition which enters, along with other influences, into the determination of a variety of beliefs and feelings, object and approach-avoidance action with respect to it" This definition states that behaviors are determined by attitude; thus, the nurse's attitude manifests itself in nursing care given in responding to patient needs. The aged are a culturally defined stereotyped group; many studies such as those by Kogan,2 Tuck-man and Lorge,3 Wölk and Wölk,4 and Zampella® confirm this. Nurses are no exception, and do manifest this stereotypic attitude about the aged.®»7 Does this tendency to stereotype the aged as dependent, isolated, inactive, unproductive, and unhappy relate to a decreased response by the nurse in meeting her patient's individual needs? The purpose of this study was to determine: 1. Whether a favorable disposition (decreased acceptance of the culturally-defined stereotype) toward old people promotes an increased response to attend to individual geriatric patient needs? 2. Whether an unfavorable disposition (acceptance of the culturally defined stereotype) toward old people promotes decreased response to attend to individual geriatric patient needs? Scores on attitude toward the aged scales are categorized as favorable versus unfavorable disposition2 and positive versus negative.8 Kogan demonstrates significant correlations among favorable and unfavorable dispositions and certain personality factors. Individuals with a strong nurturance concern for others are significantly more favorably disposed toward old people. He states that the de- pendency needs exhibited by the aged would therefore arouse positive feelings in the nurturant type person while the less nurturant would experience ambivalence to outright conscious hostility. Referring to Summers' summarization of attitude (predisposition, direction, persistance, behavioral outcroppings) this appears to be a logical assumption. Does this then imply that the nurse's attitude (and specific personality factors) correlates with a certain type of nursing care which could be defined as a response versus no response to care needs? The reviewed nursing studies place emphasis on the positive or favorable disposition as a desirable characteristic, but specific statements identifying a direct attitude to a certain response to patient care needs ratio cannot be found. This relationship is implied by statements such as, "... nursing education and in-service training... to modify or to change the stereotyped attitudes "7 The linkage is made that accepting the culturally defined (although admittedly, stereotyped) attitude implies decreased response to patient care needs; is this an instance in nursing where apparent relationships are accepted as fact? If one assumes the "positive attitude" is desirable for nursing personnel, then the nurturant personality is a desirable characteristic for a nurse. Therefore, an associated assumption is that the aged either need, require, or should have nurturing-type help and/or care.® Alice Adler,10 spokeswoman for the Gray Panthers, vehemently rejects the proposition that aged persons need nurturing. She states that institutions such as long-term care settings, medical personnel, and social service foster paternalism which maintains the myth that the aged require nurturing. This… 10.3928/0098-9134-19770501-06