Evaluating the Attitude Towards Aging and its Related Factors among Medical Emergency Staff of Golestan Province

 Due to the increase in the elderly population in Iran and the world and, of course, the increase in the number of emergency service requests by this age group, the study of the attitude towards old age among the emergency medical staff is considered as a necessity. The aim of this study was to determine the attitude towards aging and related factors in medical emergency staff. 

 In this descriptive-analytical, cross-sectional study, medical emergency staff of Golestan province were studied using census method. To collect data, the Kogan’s Attitudes Towards Older People Questionnaire was used and to analyze the data, SPSS v.18 and sample T-2 tests, Mann-Whitney, analysis of variance, and Kruskal-Wallis tests were applied at the significance level of P-value <0.05. To evaluate the goodness of fit of the model, CFI, TLI, RMSEA, and WRMR’ indices were used via the Mplus7.2 software. 

 The average score (Mean) of medical emergency staff’s attitudes towards the elderly was positive. There were significant relationships among positive attitude towards aging with marital status (P=0.007), ethnicity (P=0.018), degree of education (P=0.026) and the city of employment (P=0.001). Negative attitudes towards aging among urban emergency medical staff were significantly higher than road emergency medical staff (P=0.046). With increase in age (P=0.006) and the number of years of employment in medical emergencies (P=0.043), the score of positive attitudes towards aging increased. Personnel with Turkmen ethnicity had lower scores than personnel with Fars ethnicity in terms of prejudice score (P= 0.046). The mean score of prejudice against the elderly in single emergency medical personnel was significantly higher than married personnel (P=0.01). 

The overall attitude of the emergency medical staff of Golestan province towards aging was positive. Increase in the age and number of years of employment in medical emergencies has also been effective in creating positive attitudes towards old age.