Professional Nurse Roles when Working in Primary Health Care Units for Promoting Active Ageing in Older People with Mental Health Problems at a Province

Abstract

Professional nurses working in primary health care units are important health personnel in promoting health for clients in the community. This study was performed to study the roles of professional nurses working with older people with mental health problems in primary health care units. The participants were 198 registered nurses working in primary health care units in a province. They were recruited by stratified random sampling. Questionnaires were employed to collect the demographic data, professional nurse roles, problems, and barriers registered nurses facing in regard to active ageing in older people with mental health problems. The reliability of the roles of professional nurse questionnaire was .84. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The majority of the sample were female, approximately 93.94 %, and aged between 26-59 years old ( = 41.5, S.D. = 9.76). They had experience working in primary care units of between 2-35 years ( = 16.2, S.D. = 8.48). The overall score for nursing practice for promoting active ageing in this group ( = 3.99, S.D. =  .57). Considering in each component of active aging among that samples, the hightest average score ( = 4.15, S.D. =  .55) for participation component. The lowest average score ( = 3.83, S.D. =  .63) for security component. The problems and barriers nurses faced in their in nursing practice were nonspecific regarding the policy for promoting active ageing in this group.Consequently, the nurses' roles in their working at the primary care units was not clear, and the nurses revealed there were issues with work overload because of their variety of responsibilities. Most of them have not received any specialized training in mental health and psychiatric nursing. The study revealed that nurses should be encouraged to develop their nursing potential related to caring for the elderly with mental health problems. As a consequence, the development services in primary care unitsshwould be improved to provide adequate training for the nursing staff to ensure their capasity to care of older people.