Influencing attitudes toward the elderly early in a physician assistant training program

This study assessed the impact of a classroom intervention designed to influence physician assistant (PA) students' attitudes toward the elderly. Twenty first semester PA students participated in a quasi-experimental study which assessed their attitudes before and after a lecture/discussion on normal- and disease-related age changes and a non-clinical interview with a health older adult. In general, students became more accurate in their knowledge of older adults activities and health status. Students' open-ended responses to a sentence completion task also revealed more favorable attitudes toward older patients at the end of the course. Exploratory analysis revealed that less experienced students demonstrated more attitude change than did students returning to school specifically for PA certification.