An exploration of children’s nurses attitudes to caring for children with a developmental/learning disability.

Rationale:This study was designed to explore the potential that children with learning disabilities may not have all of their needs met whilst in hospital. It is proposed that this may arise from a lack of contact and/or training on the part of the nurses caring for them. This was supported by Ooermann & Lindgren (1995) who argued that if children with disabilities have to cope with prejudice and negative societal attitudes then nurses should be better trained to be part of the solution rather than possibly contributing to the problem.Aim: To determine if there was a difference in score on scales measuring attitudes to caring for children with disabilities between children’s nurses based in a regional referral centre and children’s nurses based in district general hospitals by comparing the results of an attitudinal scale.Methodology: A pre-existing self-report attitude scale was modified to take account of children’s nursing issues and was distributed to a sample of children’s nurses working in a regional referral hospital and in outlying paediatric wards in district general hospitals.Results: There was a significant difference in the attitudes recorded with nurses working in the district general hospitals who reported a marginally more positive attitude to children with disabilities than those working in the regional referral hospital.Conclusion: Although differences were found between the hospitals, there was insufficient information to determine the causative factors underlying this differenceRecommendations: Further study is required to refine the data collection tool and investigate the findings.Limitations: The sample size was small which may have affected the results. District was an amalgam of several hospitals that may have produced variables that were not controlled for.