Background
In the Netherlands, the older population (aged 65 and over) accounted for 19.2% of the population in 2019, and is predicted to be 25.5% by the year 2040 [
1]. Because of these demographic changes, nursing care in hospitals increasingly involve older patients [
2]. Older people are more likely to experience multiple chronic health conditions, have issues related to poly-pharmacy and often require additional support with activities of daily living [
3]. Furthermore, the complexity of care needs of older people has increased as a result of life prolonging advancements in healthcare [
4]. This results in a rising demand for nurses demonstrating excellent knowledge, attitudes and skills regarding the care for older patients as nurses are directly influencing the quality of care older patients receive [
5].
Several studies have investigated the knowledge and attitudes of nurses towards older patients [
4,
6‐
9]. These studies found that care for older people is not considered a very attractive area of nursing practice [
4,
7,
8,
10], mostly as a result of professional disrespect for choosing to work with older people and the related low status of older people in the hospital setting [
11,
12]. Older patients can be considered a burden and obstacle to the more important work of caring for younger adults, with some nurses finding care for cognitively impaired older people difficult and frustrating [
13]. Rush et al. [
9] found that nurses’ held coexisting positive and negative attitudes towards generic and specific aspects of older adult care. Negative attitudes, in particular, were directed at the characteristics of older adults, their care demands or where reflected in nurses’ approaches to care.
Many of the studies measuring nurses’ knowledge and attitudes included by Liu et al. [
7] and Rush et al. [
9] had methodological limitations and both highlight the paucity of research examining nurses’ knowledge and attitudes towards older adult care. One of the most important limitation was the poor quality of measurement instruments used which was already noticed in the year 2000 [
6], but no new instruments were adequately developed and validated between 2000 and 2013. Thereafter, Dikken et al. developed and validated a new instrument, the Knowledge about Older Patients – Quiz (KOP-Q) [
14,
15] in order to investigate the knowledge levels about older patients among nursing student and hospital nurses [
16]. The results from this study were in line with previous results from studies included by Courtney et al. [
6], Liu et al. [
7] and Rush et al. [
9]: a substantial proportion of participants in all groups demonstrated insufficient knowledge about older patients. Because of methodological limitations encountered in previous studies [
6,
7], and a small number of participating hospitals and nurses included in the more recent studies regarding nurses’ knowledge levels [
16], the generalizability of results for the Netherlands can be questioned.
The aim of this study was, therefore, to explore the current knowledge of hospital nurses in the Netherlands regarding older patients using a representative sample size. Furthermore, it was tested whether the level of knowledge is associated with age, level of education, working experience and specialty of ward. Finally, three additional questions regarding nurses’ opinions and preferences towards working with older patients are explored in relation with knowledge levels. The analysis were guided by four research questions:
1.
What are the current knowledge levels of hospital nurses in the Netherlands?
2.
What factors are associated with the knowledge levels of nurses in the Netherlands?
3.
What are nurses’ opinions and preferences regarding care for older patients?
4.
How are opinions and preferences related with knowledge levels demonstrated by nurses in the Netherlands?
As there is a paucity of research examining nurses attitudes and knowledge towards older patients, results from this large multicenter study can help hospitals in prioritizing and highlighting the importance of educational and/or quality improvement programs regarding care for older patients in the future.
Discussion
The aim of this study was to explore the current knowledge about older patients of registered hospital nurses in the Netherlands and assess whether the level of knowledge is associated with age, level of education, working experience and specialty of ward. Furthermore, registered nurses’ opinions and preferences and how these are related with knowledge levels were explored. The knowledge levels of 36.5% of Dutch nurses fell below the described knowledge levels of registered nurses in literature [
15]. This is congruous with prior studies [
6,
7,
16]. In a quarterly meeting in April 2018 with representatives of all participating hospitals associated with the RENurse consortium, results were presented and discussed. The group representatives consisted of healthcare professionals, educations and policymakers. They stated that given the complex care needs of older people, it is desirable that knowledge levels of registered nurses are at least within the norm-group scoring range of nurses and results presented were therefore considered alarming.
One important result presented in this study was the wide range in knowledge levels between nurses on both hospital and ward level (Additional file
1). From 79 out 89 wards (88.8%), the range of knowledge levels varied between the norm group student level to the norm group level of nursing specialists (Additional file
1). This implies that an older patient admitted to a ward can receive highly different levels of quality of care on the same day as nurses with different knowledge levels provide care during the various shifts. Complications such as delirium and decubitus can develop quickly [
25,
26], with increased risk if nurses are not knowledgeable and act accordingly. It is remarkable that 36.5% of the Dutch nurses who demonstrate scores compared to norm group student levels do not benefit from their colleagues who score better than the norm-group of nurses (i.e., score at nurse specialist level). This result suggests that nurses do not share their knowledge effectively and/or provide peer feedback on a regular basis. When developing future education- and quality improvement programs it is important to take ways of providing peer-feedback effectively into account. Peer feedback is a process to ensure that patient care is delivered according to clinical practice standards, achieving an optimal level of quality [
27,
28]. This process supports self-regulation of clinical practice, personal empowerment, and a culture of accountability [
29]. As higher knowledge scores were observed in the older, more experiences nurses with higher education levels, and these factors influence the quality of care [
30], we believe that this group of nurses can serve as frontrunners, enhancing discussion on their ward and help to facilitate the process of peer feedback.
Secondly, this study demonstrated that most nurses do not find the care for older patients challenging which is in line with literature [
6,
7,
9]. This is an important finding taking the low knowledge levels and negative attitudes, with only 12.5% of nurses prefer to care for older patients, into account. If nurses do not find caring for older patients challenging and have other preferences, their internal motivation to follow education and quality improvement programs regarding care for older patients will be low and effects of the education program will be influenced negatively [
31]. Confronting individual nurses with their knowledge scores before entering an education program can help in gaining a better insight in one’s own ability’s and knowledge. This insight might provoke and motivate nurses to follow the education program on offer, as they understand there is much to gain for them by doing so [
32].
This study did find that nurses who do not prefer taking care of older patients (87.5%) and find it more difficult to care for them demonstrate lower knowledge levels regarding older patients. However, differences in knowledge levels were small. Results do imply that knowledge and attitude constructs such as perceptions and opinions are related and improving knowledge may, therefore, improve attitudes regarding older patients and vice versa. However, to fully understand the relation between these constructs and knowledge, more research is highly recommended.
Some considerations regarding this study should be discussed. For the first time, to our knowledge, the level of knowledge of nurses regarding older patients has been explored and described in a large (national) multicenter context providing insight in the magnitude of knowledge deficits regarding older patients in the Netherlands. To achieve a response rate above 60%, a nurse orientated research coordinator at each hospital site who was familiar with the wards and nurses proved essential [
33]. The minimum response rate of 60% is high for an online questionnaire and considered an adequate response rate by most commentators [
34]. This, in combination with findings in line from previous research, and the consistent findings between hospitals and wards in our study, makes that we believe that results of this study can be generalized towards other hospitals in the Netherlands. We did not do additional validity and reliability testing of the KOP-Q on this data, which could have decreased the validity of study results. Moreover, a relatively small number of nurses working on the emergency and intensive care department participated. Therefore, it is difficult to generalize the results for these specific groups of nurses, although these results are also in line with previous research [
6,
35]. Using an online survey tool which redirected participants who did not provided informed consent to a “thank you” page, makes is difficult to assess who these nurses were leading to insufficient insight in possible selection bias. However, with a sample size of 1743 registered nurses, we feel comfortable that the sample of this study is representative for the Netherlands. By having an online knowledge test, participants have the opportunity to seek information on the internet while answering the questions. Therefore, we assessed the time participants needed to answer all questions and did not see any abnormalities. For this study, patient outcomes were not included. It would be interesting to explore the influence of knowledge levels and attitudes in relation to patient outcomes. Finally, some differences that were found in knowledge levels were small and discussion can exist regarding the clinical relevance. Given the number of nurses included in this study and the variety in knowledge levels on hospital and ward level, the healthcare professionals, education and policymakers of the RENurse consortium share the opinion that these results are of clinical relevance and that nurses’ knowledge regarding older patients should be increased in all participating hospitals.
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