Methods: This study is a cross-sectional and descriptive research on nurses from the adult units and the psychiatry department at two medical centers in South Taiwan. A structured survey was conducted to collect data, including demographic profile, knowledge, attitudes and skills concerning dementia care. Descriptive statistics, analysis of variance and Pearson correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data.
Results: Most of the acute care nurses have experiences with care for patients with dementia (n=288, 93.5%) for an average of 6.9 years (years of care experience = 0 to 31, SD = 7.29). Only 36.7% (n=113) of them have ever received training related to dementia care for an average of 2 hours. Seminars or workshops on dementia care constitute only 11.9% of the related training, indicating that it is imperative for healthcare facilities to increase education programs on dementia care in future. Scores in dementia care competence reveal that the nurses mostly have positive attitudes towards care for patients with dementia, but still need further improvement in awareness of problem behaviors associated with dementia, differentiation between delirium and dementia, and skills for handling problem behaviors.The results also show that there is no significant correlation between scores in knowledge of dementia care and attitudes towards dementia care while there is a significant correlation between scores in knowledge of dementia care and dementia care skills (p＜0.01). In addition, whether attitudes towards dementia care are positive or negative also affects scores in dementia care skills (p＜0.01).
Conclusion: This study of two medical centers in South Taiwan is a preliminary investigation of competence in dementia care among nurses. Nurses in the acute care settings mostly learn from their past experiences or the experiences of their peers as knowledge sources. Most of them have positive attitudes towards care for patients with dementia, but should receive further education and training on awareness of dementia and skills for handling problem behaviors to improve quality of care for hospitalized patients with dementia. Future research can further investigate the difficulties hospitals encounter in providing care for patients with dementia as well as the relationship between hospital environments and nurse to patient ratios.