The purpose of this study was to explore Iranian nursing students' perspectives regarding caring for elderly patients. A qualitative design, based on the content analysis approach, was used to collect and analyze the perspectives of 25 senior nursing students who were providing care for elderly patients in the medical and surgical wards of two teaching hospitals in Tehran, Iran. After using purposeful sampling to select the participants, semistructured interviews were held in order to collect the data. During the data analysis, two main themes and six subthemes emerged. The first theme was "the barriers to caring for elderly patients", with the subthemes of "policies and rules of the organization", "a lack of educational preparation", and "an inappropriate physical environment", and the second theme was "the facilitators to caring for elderly patients", with the subthemes of "religion and cultural norms", "role modeling", and "previous exposure to elderly patients". This study informs international audiences of the factors that influence the quality of care of elderly patients so that strategies can be devised in order to prepare nursing students to meet the physical and psychological needs of elderly patients.
© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.