Ageism in Institutional Care: Causes of the Discriminatory Attitudes of Older Care Staffs towards Ageing and Old Age and Intervention Strategies

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With increasing life expectancy, the need for care institutions for the elderly is also increasing. In terms of the quality of care for older people, the evaluation of the levels of ageism amongst the staff who work with the elderly housed in these institutions is important. In consequence, the standard questionnaire, which is composed of socio-demographic variables and the Fraboni Scale of Ageism, was given to 102 care staff workers in the city of Antalya. The analysis of these results indicates that the length of time working in the older adult care sector, the length of time working within an institutional setting, and gender do have effects upon the levels of ageism amongst care staff. In addition, the levels of sub-scales of ageism (discrimination, prejudice and avoidance) were also analysed. The results show the number of hours worked affected the degree/level of both discrimination and prejudice. It is evident from the results obtained that those care staff who work for longer than the legal number of working hours were three times more likely to exhibit discriminatory attitudes. Further, the avoidance levels exhibited by the care staff increased linearly with the length of experience in working within the elderly adult care sector that a member of the care staff had.

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Ageism , older adult care , institutional care , care staff , age discrimination , logistic regression

Mediterranean Journal Of Humanities

33

Mediterranean Journal Of Humanities