Relationship between caring nurses and elderly loneliness

Abstract

Background: Elderly people tend to experience biological, psychological, social, and spiritual changes due to the aging process. Changes in their psychology lead to a feeling of loneliness and depression, which have a negative impact on their physical health and overall well-being. Nurses as care providers, need to ensure they are always beside the elderly to prevent them from being lonely. This study, therefore, aims to determine the relationship between caring nurses and the level of loneliness of elderly. Design and Methods: This is an observational analytic design study with a cross sectional approach. Simple random sampling was used to obtain data from a total of 113 elderly people in home care. Furthermore, the CBI 24 Items and UCLA Loneliness Version 3, were used for data collection, while Spearmen’s Rho Test with a level of ρ <α = 0.05 was used for its analysis. Results: The results showed that caring nurses tend to prevent the emergence of loneliness in the elderly with a Spearmen’s Rho test P at 0.00015 (P≤0.05) and correlation coefficient r of -0.686. Conclusions: In conclusion, there is a relationship between caring nurses and the level of loneliness in the elderly.

Keywords

• Elderly
• Loneliness
• Caring Nurses