Mateja Lorber
University of Maribor, Slovenia
Title: Students’ attitudes towards aging and older people is an important activity for care
Biography
Biography: Mateja Lorber
Abstract
The population is ageing globally and older people are more likely to have chronic diseases and need health services. The steady increase of aging population requires not only more people working on the field of aging but also have to create new services. Attitudes of future healthcare professionals effect on the quality of older people care. There is a problem, that students from medicine, nursing, psychology, and social work frequently have low interest for work with older people. The aim of the study is to examine student’ attitudes towards aging and older people. Kogan Attitude towards Older People scale tool was used for assessing attitudes towards aging and older people. In this research 157 students from one of the three Slovenian universities participated. It was found positive students’ attitudes (122±11.85 from 204 points) towards aging and older people but only 38% students want to work with older people in the future. We did not find statistically significant differences according to the gender (t=1.247; p=0.084), year of study (F=1.191; p=0.314) and on the field of study (t=0.461; p=0.641). But it was found, that preference for working with older people positively associated (χ2=0.271; p=0.014) with attitudes towards aging and older people. There is a growing need for health care workers committed to working with older people. The most important is the promotion of health care of older people and to find out the factors associated with attitudes towards aging and older people.