The impacts of nurses’ attitudes towards dementia, critical reflection competency, and nursing work environment on person-centered nursing in acute care hospitals: A descriptive study

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine the attitudes of acute care nurses towards demen-tia, their critical reflection competency, and the level of nursing work environment and to identify the factors relating to person-centered nursing. Methods: The study was conducted for 149 nurses with at least 1 year of experience working in acute care hospitals and providing nursing care to hospitalized elderly patients. The measurements used were the Dementia Attitude Scale Korean version, the Criti-cal Reflection Competency Scale, the Nursing Work Environment Scale, and the Person-Centered Nursing Assessment Tool. The collected data were analyzed with frequency analysis, descriptive sta-tistics, independent t-test, ANOVA test, Pearson’s correlation, and multiple regression using IBM SPSS 29.0 software. Results: The factors influencing person-centered nursing performance were crit-ical reflection competency (β=.49, p<.001), attitudes towards dementia (β=.29, p<.001), and clinical career (β=-.26, p=.024), having the explanation power of 59.6%. Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that critical reflection competency, attitudes towards dementia, and clinical career have an impact on person-centered nursing performance. Specifically, higher levels of critical reflection com-petency and positive attitudes towards dementia were predictors with higher levels of person-centered nursing performance. Therefore, to enhance person-centered nursing performance among acute care nurses, it is important to prioritize critical reflection training programs for experienced nurses to en-hance their critical reflection competency.