Why do nursing students not want to work in geriatric care? A national questionnaire survey

Abstract

Background: Given the severe shortage of nurses in geriatric care in Israel and the planned expansion of their role in the care of older people, the Israel Ministry of Health's Nursing Division decided to investigate the readiness of current students to work in geriatrics.

Objectives: To gather last-year student nurses' views on geriatric nursing as a career choice and identify the factors behind those views.

Design: A cross-sectional questionnaire study was designed.

Settings and participants: 486 students (70% of the total last-year student nurse population) across the whole range of study settings completed the questionnaire in 2011.

Methods: On the basis of extensive data collection from focus groups of student nurses and working geriatric nurses a structured, self-administered questionnaire was compiled. The researchers distributed and collected the questionnaire in the students' classrooms.

Results: 61% of the 486 respondents had no intention of working in geriatrics while 12% considered the prospect favourably. 27% of the respondents were prepared to consider geriatric nursing as a career choice only after advanced specialist training in that field. 69% said that the planned expansion of the powers of geriatric nurses would incline them more favourably to work in geriatrics. A relatively high proportion of those interested in working in geriatrics were men. The students' appraisal of the content of their training programme and of the current state of geriatrics in Israel appeared not to influence career choice. Multiple regression analysis found that the factors most predictive of geriatric care as a career choice were a generally favourable attitude to older people, the expansion of nurse powers in the sector and previous experience in older people care. Studying on an academic programme as opposed to a diploma programme was a negative predictor.

Conclusions: The non-influence of training programme content/design is the key finding. The chief recruitment effort should be invested in making the domain of geriatric nursing more attractive to nurses by improving its pay structure and expanding the powers of geriatric nurses to the level of Clinical Nurse Specialist, which would provide an attractive promotion track.

Keywords: Attitudes to older people; Career intentions; Geriatric nursing; Nurse education; Role development.