Abstract

CAMARGO, ITZA LEILIANA  and  CARO C, CLARA VIRGINIA. Caring behaviors of elderly people and nursing professionals: evidence for professional qualification. Coclé Province, Panamá. av.enferm. [online]. 2009, vol.27, n.1, pp.48-59. ISSN 0121-4500.

This research work is classified in the line of nursing care and practice from the Nursing Faculty of the National University of Colombia, Bogotá office. It is of the type "descriptive with quantitative approach". It identifies the care perception in elderly people that attend nursing consultations, as well as the care perception of nursing professionals that performed said consultations. It describes the dimensions of caring behaviors perceived by elderly people that attend nursing consultations and the dimensions of caring behaviors of nursing professionals, with the purpose of promoting lines of work taking into account the perspectives of the subject tended to (the elderly). The study subjects were 74 elderly men (older adults of 60 years of age) and 54 nurses from the province of Coclé, Republic of Panamá. The instrument used to collect data was the caring behavior inventory of Wolf (1986), submitted to facial validation and judgment by experts in the city of Panamá. The analysis of each one of the instrument items was performed separately with both elderly people and nursing professionals and the observer. Subsequently a global analysis of each dimension was performed and the answers of each group were compared to establish their perception in relation with caring behaviors. In conclusion, the results show that in spite the existence of important differences in the perception of elderly people and nursing professionals in relation with caring behaviors, these differences are rational and expected. The nursing professionals are influenced by philosophy beliefs intrinsic to the profession; the elderly people by the way they are, think and live. The nursing consultation has a continuous and permanent nature, based on a holistic and individualized care that enables adding value to the care of elderly people during nursing consultations in the first level of attention which are classified in the principles of primary health care.

Keywords : Aged; Nursing Care; Primary Health Care; Research.

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