The Filipino Nursing Students' Dilemmas in Geriatric Care

摘要

The continually rising percentage of the elderly population and the demand for geriatric nursing care are dramatically related. While it is true that most undergraduate programs prepare nurses for the care of geriatric patients, most receive limited academic preparation in the nursing curriculum (Williams & Mezey, 2000). This is particularly true in the Philippines where there is no stand-alone geriatric nursing course. This phenomenological study purports to capture the lived experiences of Filipino nursing students' dilemmas in geriatric care. Five Filipino senior nursing students and three clinical faculty from a comprehensive university in the Philippines were purposely chosen for the study. A two-part instrumentation was used. The first is the robotfoto, a Dutch term which means a cartographic sketch of the subject (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002). The second was a semi-structured face-to-face interview that was recorded with the consent of the participants. The full texts were phenomenologically reduced using a repertory grid to observe both cool and warm analyses, which facilitates the identification of unique conceptual clusters. Findings of this study have described the elements that define student dilemmas in geriatric care. The emerged Students' Dilemmas in Geriatrics Causality Quadrant (SDGCQ), which consists of (a) Foundational Deficit, (b) Psychological Deficit, (c) Relational-Attitudinal Deficit, and (d) Occupational Deficit, are valuable discussion points for needed reforms in the present-day nursing curriculum.