Nursing faculty and students' perspectives of how students learn to work with older people

Background: Despite efforts to incorporate information about older people in pre-licensure nursing programs, there are inconsistent results from studies examining student nurses' perceptions towards the aging population. There is research suggesting that healthcare settings and nursing practice is perpetuating negative perspectives towards older people. Objective: To gain an understanding of how social contexts are influencing student nurses' experiences when learning to work with older people. Design: Descriptive case study guided by the theoretical framework of social learning theory. Setting: A university in Western Canada that offers a pre-licensure nursing program. Participants: 28 student nurses and 13 faculty in the nursing program. Methods: Participant interviews and focus groups were conducted with nursing faculty and students. Results: Key findings from this study are that students' previous experiences with older people, through family or work experiences, and their first clinical experience in long-term care negatively influenced their perceptions about working with older people. Clinical nurses and faculty influenced students' perceptions about nursing practice with older people, sometimes in subtle ways, underscoring that students are learning from what they see and hear in practice. Students were ill-prepared for the complexity of the aging population, particularly those with cognitive impairment. Conclusions: Learning activities that engage students in active learning, such as simulation, providing students with a positive lexicon of how to describe older patients, and more overt attention to the perspectives students and faculty bring to the learning environment need to be carefully explored. Meaningful learning experiences with older people in multiple contexts are needed to thoughtfully plan how to disrupt negative perceptions that might emerge through the nursing education program.