The Continuation of Prejudice: Addressing Negative Attitudes in Nurse Training and Continuing Professional Education

Abstract

Measures of attitudes to ageing typically examine only explicit attitudes, treating attitude holders as a homogeneous group with regards to education levels. Implicit attitudes (i.e., the immediate attitudinal response before conscious processes amend that attitude to an explicit attitude) have been less commonly examined. The current study examined both explicit and implicit attitudes towards ageing in four groups: nurses with high exposure to older patients; nurses with exposure to a broader patient age range; nursing students at the start of training and nursing students at the end of training. There were no significant differences in explicit attitudes, but implicit attitudes were significantly less negative in the student groups relative to the practicing nurses groups. The argument that training and experience have little effect on attitudes is discussed.