Özet:

AIM: This study aims to examine the attitude and behaviour of the health and administrative workers of a geriatric care centre towards elderly. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was carried out on 49 health and administrative workers of the Geriatric Care Centre of Kayseri Training and Research Hospital between January and February, 2011. As the data collection tool, a personal and vocational information form, and Ageism Attitude Scale (ASS) were employed. Student t test, analysis of variance and Tukey Table test, Man Whitney U-test, and Pearson and Spearman Correlation Analysis were used for apropriate statistical anlaysis. RESULTS: Of the participants, 75.5% were women, 79.6% were married and the average age was 37.6±9.3. The 87.8% of the workers had nuclear families and 57.1% had lived together with an elderly person in their family before. The mean ASS score was 68.4±9.1 and the participants had positive thoughts about positive discrimination on senility and agesim. The participants that had previously lived with an elderly in their family had significantly higher mean scores of positive discrimination on elderly in comparison with the ones who had never lived with an elderly (p < 0.05). Contentedness of working in a geriatric centre did not significantly effect the positive discrimination scores on elderly. The total ASS scores were also not significantly affected (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: As the care of senile people requires a special level of awareness and skills, it is necessary to endow the workers with this awareness during both recruitment and in-service training periods

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