Geriatric Long Term Care Nursing Competencies and Willingness to Serve among Final-Year Nurse Students from Difference School Systems: A National Survey

Abstract

Background: As facing the rapid growth of the elderly population the demands for long-term care are drastically increasing The important strategy for Taiwan in preparation for long-term care policy is to focus on the engagement of long-term care professionals Therefore there is a need to understand the final-year nursing students’ nursing competencies in Geriatric Long Term Care (GLTC) in the hope of their involvement in the future care for geriatric and disable needs Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore nursing students’ GLTC nursing competencies willingness to serve and its influential factors among the final year of the Department of Nursing from different school systems Method: A cross-sectional design was used and the subjects were the student nurse (SN) in the Department of Nursing from different school systems The research instruments were the self-developed structured questionnaire included: the current situations of GLTC including GLTC-related knowledge practicum experience and GLTC-related course taking status willingness to serve in GLTC and GLTC nursing competence A Probability Proportionate to Size (PPS) sampling strategy was used to collect data from the Department of Nursing of universities and technical vocational colleges A total of 1 010 questionnaires were distributed and 949 valid questionnaires were returned with the response rate of 93 96% The data were analyzed use SPSS version 17 and t-test one-way ANOVA Person’s correlation and Spearman’s rho rank correlation coefficient were used for correlation analysis Multiple regression with enter method was adopted to predict the significant factors influencing the nursing students’ GLTC nursing competencies and willingness to serve Results: 89 8% of the subjects in this study were females with an average age of 20 95 years Majority of SN had frequent contacts with the elderly but seldom had the opportunities to know disabled people In terms of the current status of GLTC the average score in knowledge was 9 18 ±0 43 out of 15 with the junior college students scored the lowest (8 9±0 26) The mean score of the practicum experiences from all subjects was 2 99±0 53 and the junior college system scored higher (3 04±0 49) than other school systems 75 7% of the subjects had taken geriatric nursing related courses while 46 6% had taken long-term care nursing courses and the courses were mostly provided as elective ones in their senior years In terms of the willingness to serve in GLTC students ranked close to “Agree” (2 88±0 67) The subjects would be willing to solve the health problems for the elderly or disabled elders and regarded GLTC nursing work was a profession but they might not want to work in the GLTC settings due to unclear GLTC nursing working environment and ambiguous policies personal characteristics or low salary and few welfare benefits The mean score in GLTC nursing competence was 3 18±0 52 between “Agree” and “Strongly Agree” showing that the nursing students had adequate competence in ethical could assess client’s living environment and needs and had better competencies in timely advocate and the provision of palliative treatment and hospice care; however the competence in GLTC-related care models and implementation of the intervention was insufficient and they also had lower self-perception of leadership and group communication abilities Further correlational analysis showed that the GLTC-related nursing competencies were negatively correlated with age and GLTC-related knowledge yet positively correlated with the practicum experience and the related course taking status It was found in the analysis of the different school systems that for the junior college students having the experience living with the disabled and the GLTC-related knowledge were negatively correlated with their nursing competence GLTC-related course taking status and the nursing competence were positively correlated for students in general universities (GU) For students in junior colleges and 4-year colleges (4-y C) their GLTC practicum experiences and GLTC-related course taking status were significantly correlated with their nursing competencies The willingness to serve in GLTC were negatively correlated with age and school system while positively correlated with the experience living with the elderly people practicum experience and the related course taking status Through regression analysis “ School system” (B=-0 03) “Experiences living with the disabled” (B=-0 03) “GLTC-related knowledge” (B=-0 01) “Practicum experiences” (B=0 05) and “GLTC-related course taking status” (B=0 07) were significant predictors for competency which can explain 10% of the variance In addition the major predictive factors of the willingness to serve in GLTC included “School system” (B=-0 02) “GLTC-related knowledge” (B=0 01) “Practicum experiences” (B=0 02) “GLTC-related course taking status” (B=0 21) and “Nursing competence” (B=0 12) with 23% of the explanatory power Conclusions: This study aimed to understand the current status of and the influential factors for the nursing competence and willingness to serve in GLTC among the final-year nursing students from different school systems to provide suggestions for the nursing students or new nursing staff in the development of nursing in GLTC In nursing education it is suggested that GLTC course be included as the mandatory course to enhance the nursing students’ competence and willingness to serve and that through the practicum experiences in GLTC settings the frequency for the nursing students to contact the elderly and the disabled be increased in an attempt to enhance the final-year nursing students’ willingness to serve in GLTC

Date of Award	2018 Jan 29
Original language	English
Supervisor	Ching-Min Chen (Supervisor)