Background:
Global aging is an ongoing situation. The changing face of Taiwanese older adults is having a profound impact on health care generally. Nowadays, there has been shift in how nursing practice, education, and research are addressing the emerging health care needs of an aging society. Nurses, as the core members of the geriatric interdisciplinary team, must have good geriatric care competencies so as to provide appropriate aged care services. However, to date, there was no related certification about geriatric care competencies and rarely investigate the competencies of nurses in hospital.
Purpose:
The aim of the present study was to explore the geriatric care competencies of nurses in hospital and identify the factors associated with geriatric care competencies.
Methods:
We conducted a cross-sectional research design. Nurses who had more 3 months’ clinical experience and worked at wards in the medical center in the southern Taiwan were included in our study. The structured questionnaire was developed based on the literature review and validated through expert consensus, which included: demographic variables, variables related to nursing careers, geriatric educational variables, geriatric care knowledge scale, attitude toward geriatric care scale and self-reported geriatric care competency scale.
Results:
A total of 277 nurses are included and completed our questionnaires. Of which 110 (39.7%) nurses worked at medical wards, and 71 (25.6%) of them worked at surgical wards, and the others worked at integrated wards or geriatric ward. Most of nurses graduated from bachelor degree (89.9%). About a half of nurses (54.6%) worked for less than 5 years. 53.1% of them attended the geriatric nursing course when they were students, and 37.1% of them have already received geriatric care continuous education. In the univariate analysis, age, division, nurse advanced level, received geriatric nursing class and received geriatric continuous education were significantly associated with self-reported geriatric care competencies. Adjusting demographic variables and variables related to nursing careers, we found that the received geriatric care continuous education was related to the self-reported geriatric care competencies.
Conclusion:
Nurse who have already received geriatric care continuous education have higher geriatric care competencies. Our study finding indicated that the geriatric care continuous education for experienced nurses is necessary. More geriatric care continuous education should be established and standardized in our nursing continuous education.