Aim: To describe attitudes towards caring for older people among nurses and student nurses in sixparticipating countries.Background: Working with older people has historically had a negative profile and with a global risein the numbers of older people and a global shortage of nurses, it is essential to recruit nurses intothis area. This study gathered data from six countries to explore nurses and student nurses attitudesto nursing older people and to gerontological nursing as a career.

Method: A convenience sample of 1064 nursing students and 2585 nurses in six countries answeredthe Multifactorial Attitudes Questionnaire (MAQ) designed to elicit attitudes towards caring forolder people and to the esteem that comes with working in this field. The MAQ consists of sevenpositive and 13 negative statements and uses a Likert scale. A higher total score indicates a morepositive attitude.

Results: Differences in attitudes among the six counties was observed for both nursing students andfor nurses (<.001). Nursing students in Scotland and USA had the highest mean scores and Sloveniaand Sweden were the countries with the lowest mean score. The highest score for nurses were reportedin Scotland and Sweden and lowest in Germany and Japan.

Conclusion: From the findings, it is suggested that formal nursing education to students between 18- 29 years of age has high importance for positive attitudes towards working with older people.