Turkish Journal of
GERIATRICS

Atatürk Üniversitesi Hemşirelik Yüksekokulu, Halk Sağlığı Hemşireliği A.D., Doç.Dr.
Atatürk Ãœniversitesi HemÅŸirelik Yüksekokulu, İç Hastalıkları HemÅŸireliÄŸi A.D., Yrd.Doç.Dr. Primary health care services and health staff working here are obliged to take care of the elder in every age. The development of the care quality of the elder mainly depends on the knowledge, attitude and behaviors of the staff working with elder. This study has been conducted to evaluate knowledge, opinions and applications of the primary health care staff on elderly care in Erzurum. The determining data of the present study have been collected on July 2002. The health staff working in the Health Centers in Erzurum (general practitioners, nurse, midwife, health civil servants) constitutes the focal point of the study. We aimed toreach the whole data in the study but only 130 person (65.7%) with full data have been included in the study. As a means of collecting data the question forms prepared by the researchers have been used. In the question form, four questions for each task to be fulfilled by the primary health care staff have been asked on elder health and care. The first question to evaluate the knowledge for each task was “Is it your duty according to the law?” the second question was “Should it be your duty?”, and the third question was “Do you apply this duty?” The fourth question of each task has been asked to evaluate the opinions on fulfilling this task of the health staff in the future. The data have been evaluated by using frequency distribution and chi-square analysis in SPSS program. The rate of the tasks answered correctly on elder care was between 26.2% and 63.8%. The least known was “To take care of elder at home” as 26.2%, 17.7% was the rate applied, accepted rate as 10%, and 32.3% was the task of future. The other tasks of least known, applied, accepted and wanted to fulfill in the future were as “The health care of healthy elder individual”, “The care of sick elder”, “Determining the elder population” and “Evaluating the health criteria of elder population”. The most widely known was “To give health education to elder” (63.8%), (62.3%) applied, (80.8%) accepted, and 73.1 % was the future expectation. Following, it has been determined that the most widely known task was “To protect the health of elder” (62.3%) and the most widely applied task was “To give emergency care of the elder”. It has been concluded that the rates of knowing and applying the tasks on elder care of the health staff were lower than the opinions on fulfilling these tasks in the future. The tasks on elder care have been applied and had a desire to do in the future mostly by general practitioners. It is necessary that the health staff who are expected to give elder health care should change the traditional health care thought and should at the same time increase their knowledge, sensitivity and motivation. Keywords : Elder care, health staff, primary health care units, knowledge, opinions, applications.