Nursing Students' Experiences During Interaction with Elders in Taiwan

Chen, Shiue

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Shiue Chen, PhD
Nursing Department, National Tainan Institute of Nursing, Taiwan, Tainan, Taiwan

Learning Objective 1: 1) The learner will understand nursing students’ experiences with elders.

Learning Objective 2: 2) The learner will describe the major themes that emerged such as there are different communication tones between students and elders.

Background. The aged population is increasing and the number of people 65 years old and over constitutes 10.69 % of the total population in 2010 in Taiwan. Therefore, the quality of gerotological nursing education and the care of quality of long-term care providers will have a deep impact on the elder care. For this reason, there is a need to explore the experiences of nursing students when they interacted with elders in order to develop the gerotological nursing program.

Purpose of the study: This study aims to examine the experiences of Associate degree nursing students when they interacted with elders.

Methods: The study was conducted from September, 2006 to December, 2009. A content analysis was performed on students’ responses to open-ended questions (n=650 about their experience of interactions with elders.

Results: Seven themes were found, including: 1.There are different communication tones between students and elders; 2. There is a big generation gap in cultural view between students and elders; 3. The students can learn different experiences and wisdom from elders; 4.Those elders are often nagging and worrying about everything; 5. It is necessary to be patient and have caring when interacting with elders; 6. There is a need to understand the elders’ negative emotion; 7. There is a need to adjust to the slow pace, motion and voice.

Conclusion: The results can be used as empirical evidence for developing gerotological education programs in the future and can be used as reference for nursing teachers to help students generate self-reflection on elder care.

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