The Views of Medical Students on Elder Discrimination

Dear Editor, The age of 65 and older grows rapidly in the world, which until recently was deemed to be young. Changes in the social structure increase the importance of nursing elderly patients in the area of health services. The most important problem is the fact that health services can not be allocated fairly as it is implemented worldwide. While fairness in nursing of elderly patients takes shape with the equal usage of health services, it diminishes in line with the health personnel's tendency to discriminate elders. Elder discrimination is defined as discrimination aimed at the elderly persons. Only behavior patterns depending on chronological age develop in health personnel when elder discrimination exists and a tendency to treat the acute diseases of the young persons rather than dealing with the elders' chronic diseases arises. In our research, it has been aimed to determine the attitudes of the medical students concerning age discrimination and the factors affecting these attitudes. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 63 sixth grade students studying in Faculty of Medicine during the 2009-2010 academic year. The research protocol was approved by the Faculty Executive Committee. The survey was composed of “Elder Discrimination Attitude Scale (EDAS)”. The scale consisted of 23 statements that incorporated both positive and negative judgments concerning elders, senescence or aging. The total point that a participant could achieve with EDAS ranged between the values 23 and 115. Scoring a higher total point indicates the fewness of negative attitudes in respect of elder discrimination. Descriptive statistics (mean, standart deviation, median, and range) were used for summarize the data. The Chi-Square test was used to compare the categorical variables. Comparisons of continuous variables were made using Student’s t-test and Mann-Whitney U test. p<0.05 was adopted as a statistically significant difference. Average age of the 63 students (as 21 females and 42 males) included in the research was 24.08±1.46 years (range 22-29 years). The median EDAS score was 87. There was no statistically significant relationship between the students' EDAS scores and their sex, place of birth, places of residence, types of family, whether they live with elders or not, and the places where their grandparents lived. Total EDAS points of the students who did not want to live with their own parents after getting married were found out to be higher than that of those who wanted to live with their parents after getting married (Table 1).