The attitudes of primary care nurses in the families’ aging cycle

In Portugal, due to the importance of the family in care, the professional profile of the family nurse was created to ensure quality care, since they are considered to be at the core of the teams. Several authors argue that nurses who assign importance to the families in health care are more likely to interact with these families, increasing the level of care. In addition, the center of attention in nursing interventions should not only be the families’ responses, but also the nurses’ attitudes. With the aim of assessing nurses’ attitudes about the family care, a quantitative study was carried out in which the scale “A Importância das Famílias nos Cuidados de Enfermagem-Atitudes dos Enfermeiros (IFCE-AE)” was applied to 871 Primary Health Care nurses in the center region of Portugal. It was concluded that nurses who perform a specific intervention with parents, grandparents and grandchildren (p<0.001); request the presence of grandchildren when consulting the grandparents (p<0.001); and integrate grandchildren in the care for their grandparents (p<0.001) have better attitudes.