Nursing Students' Relational Skills with Elders Improve through Humanitude Care Methodology

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Geriatric Care
• Healthcare Professional Training

Background:

• Nursing students often struggle with effective communication and care for elderly individuals with cognitive impairments.
• Existing training methods may not adequately prepare students for the complexities of interacting with this vulnerable population.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify specific difficulties nursing students encounter when interacting with cognitively impaired elders.
• To explore the underlying causes of these interaction challenges.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of the Humanitude Care Methodology (HCM) in enhancing nursing students' interaction skills.

Main Methods:

• An exploratory descriptive, quasi-experimental study involving 64 nursing students.
• Comparison between a control group (standard training) and an experimental group (HCM training).
• Data collected via pre- and post-training questionnaires, analyzed using content analysis, chi-square, and t-tests.

Main Results:

• The primary difficulty reported was managing agitated and confused elderly patients.
• Key contributing factors included insufficient theoretical-practical teaching, clinical context, lack of experience, and personality traits.
• The Humanitude Care Methodology (HCM) demonstrated a positive impact on the development of students' interaction skills.

Conclusions:

• The Humanitude Care Methodology (HCM) offers an innovative approach to nursing education.
• HCM facilitates a shift from technical, instrumental training towards more humanized and effective patient care.
• Implementing HCM can transform nursing training to better equip students for geriatric care challenges.