Abstract
Demographic changes around the world present an increasing number of elderly people and the health professionals are the ones who need to provide the best possible care for them. There is an urgent need to evaluate their attitudes toward the elderly and infer how these attitudes interfere with the provision of care. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the attitudes of medical students from the 3rd and 5th years, towards the geriatric population, using the adapted “UCLA Geriatric Attitudes Scale” (UCLA-GA – Portuguese version). The eligible population (n = 338) was composed of 172 students in the 3rd year, whose response rate was 39,53% (68 responses), and 166 students in the 5th year with a response rate of 36,14% (60 responses), totalizing 128 responses. After informed consent, participants responded to the research questionnaires and the data collected were processed, using a significance level of 0.05 - group validity was tested using the Mann-Whitney U test, construct validity was tested by calculating the Spearman correlation coefficient, and a Multivariate linear regression was also performed. The UCLA-GA scale total median score did not differ between academic years (p = 0.903), sexes (p = 0.124), or between students with and without close contact with the elderly (p = 0.070), but was higher in single students compared with married ones (p = 0.002). Only the students’ current average grade was a significant predictor, with the UCLA-GA score increasing an average of 0.8 points per each value in the student’s average grade (β = 0,847; 95% CI 0,201–1,492; p = 0.011). Our population shows favorable attitudes from the students towards the geriatric population. Considering the growing panorama of aging, these results suggest that future medical attitudes from these subjects will be positive toward geriatric populations. However, some issues need to be evaluated more in geriatric classes and more effort should be made to combat ageism and stereotyping of this population.
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Osório, D., Pinto, N., Pereira, H., Patto, M.V. (2023). Geriatric Attitudes Among Portuguese Medical Students: A UCLA Geriatric’s Attitude Scale Study. In: Guardado Moreira, M.J., A. Carvalho, L.S., Sequeira Gonçalves, P.J., Barreiros Pinheira, V.M. (eds) Longevity and Development: New perspectives on Ageing Communities . Age.Comm 2021. Lecture Notes in Bioengineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22273-3_4
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