Caring for people with intellectual disabilities: Insights from a cross-sectional study among nursing students

Caring for people with intellectual disabilities poses substantial challenges. Nursing students' emotions, thoughts, and behaviors during their education in the context of people with intellectual disabilities, remain relatively unexplored.

To examine nursing students' emotions, thoughts, competence, and expected professional behaviors in care provision for people with intellectual disabilities, as well as to identify factors associated with their expected professional behaviors with this population.

A cross-sectional study using a closed self-report questionnaire and one open-ended question.

The largest academic nursing department in Israel.

Of 245 sophomore nursing students, 177 agreed to participate (71.4 % response rate).

The study measured feelings, thoughts, competence, and expected professional behaviors in care provision for people with intellectual disabilities based on the Multidimensional Attitudes Scale. One open-ended question addressed how students believe their competence in caring for people with intellectual disabilities could be improved during their nursing studies. A hierarchical linear regression analysis was performed to investigate the contribution of emotions, thoughts, and competence to explaining expected behaviors in care provision. The significance of the model and the R² were calculated. The open-ended question was analyzed by the constant comparative method.

Negative emotions and thoughts (β = -0.37, 95 % CI -0.47; -0.15 and β = -0.33, 95 % CI -0.39; -0.13, respectively), along with positive emotions (β = 0.25, 95 % CI 0.07;0.33), showed significant associations with expected professional behaviors. Qualitative analysis revealed three key themes: communication concern, knowledge gap, and curiosity. The findings of the open-ended question corroborate the quantitative findings.

It is important to realize that in order to develop quality professional skills for caring for people with intellectual disability, nursing educators must adopt a deep discussion of negative emotions and thoughts with their students regarding people with intellectual disabilities. Ignoring these negative emotions and thoughts can exacerbate the neglect of people with intellectual disabilities' health needs.