ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to understand the nursing students’experiences of caring for demented elderly patient in a nursinghome. The subjects were 11 nursing students experienced clinicalnursing practicum in the nursing home. Data were collected usingparticipant observation and open-in-depth interview. For the dataanalysis, the Colaizzi phenomenological method was utilized.Nursing students’ experiences for caring demented elderly patientswere classified into seven categories (e.g., feeling general anxiety).There were 16 clusters of themes. As a conclusion, nursingstudents’ experience of caring demented elderly patients in thenursing home started with negative feeling toward the patients andcaring but later on they realized change of themselves. However,these results suggest that the appropriate time for the nursingstudents’ clinical experience with demented elderly patients wouldbe better at senior year than junior year.