Health Education Need of the Elderly<\/p>\n
Part 1: Identification of need<\/p>\n
Safety among the elderly should be a major concern to almost every individual who is surrounded by an elderly person. The elderly account for roughly 23% of accidental deaths despite being only 115 of total population. The National Safety Council reported that almost 24000 individuals who are over 65 years die yearly from accidental deaths, and injuries were sustained by another additional 800,000 individuals (Ren et.al 2018). These injuries posed great threats as they could disable them for a minimum of one day. The most frequent safety issues that the elderly suffer from include automobile accidents, poisons, burns and falls. In addition, being exposed to extreme temperatures also puts the elderly at risk of death or injury. <\/p>\n
There are both internal and external factors that lead to accidents. These include emotional or cognitive changes, increased medication use, chronic disease incidents, and the normal physiological changes that naturally occur with aging are among the internal factors. External factors include a range of environmental conditions that pose as threats to the elderly. Elderly safety is extremely important as a variety of issues such as decreased mobility and cognition, smell, hearing and decreased vison could easily affect their safety. Seniors themselves may not be able to realize these changes as they happen gradually.<\/p>\n
The most common safety hazard, in older adults, is falls. Consider the following observations: one half or one third of people aged 65 and older are prone to falling, any type of fall might be a predictor of tomorrows falls, among those who have experienced falls, two thirds of them will probably fall again in the near future, one is more likely to suffer serious effects of falls such as broken bones or hip fracture the more they become older (Sotoudeh et.al 2018). These statistics prompted the federal government of the United States to enact the Elder Fall Prevention Act of 2003 to reduce falls by developing a national initiative. This act was devised to provide proven services that prevent or reduce elder falls, promote public education, and also fund research.<\/p>\n
It is the responsibility of everyone to prevent falls. Outreach teachings on preventing falls is designed to meet elderly people\u2019s needs, their families and those who surround them. Anyone who is surrounded by the elderly could learn more on safety at community colleges, businesses, libraries and senior centers. Settings with elderly people need to schedule meetings involving multidisciplinary departments to plan interventions and recognize problems. <\/p>\n
Another prominent safety threat is fire hazards. The elderly comprises of the group with the highest risk of death or injury due to fire. Long term care facilities and hospitals have knowledge of the threat fire poses. These institutions must conform to certain building codes that require, oxygen precautions, exit windows, fire extinguishers, safety doors and other safety measures. Such institutions must have a fire safety procedure, an evacuation plan, procedures for its containment, and a quick messaging system devised to alert the local fire department and lower fire risks. <\/p>\n
In such institutions, smoke detectors must be installed, regular checking and replacing of batteries twice a year, smoking and opening flames should be handled with caution as they should not be left at an unstable surface or unattended. This is because they could fall on flammable furniture or floors (Sotoudeh et.al 2018). In order to prevent smoldering materials from combusting, it is important to empty all smoking materials into a container that is metallic. In addition, health service providers in these institutions are not to disable the technology even in instances of steam or cooking fumes. Instead, they should try a different detector type or move the device. Older people should also not be allowed to smoke in bed. <\/p>\n
Among the simplest way to increase the safety of these individuals is listening to their music of preference. Research done on it concluded that the elderly who listen to their favorite music demonstrate significantly good moods and more positive behavior without supervision when compared to those without music. To put in emphasize people have different music tastes. These people together with their family members should be able to identify their favorite music, or rather the health care providers should try different music types and watch for their response. Some may prefer gospel music, others like bug band, still others love classical. Baby Bommers music, considering the demographics, may soon be the common music. These includes music from artists such as the Beatles, James Taylor and Elvis.<\/p>\n
Part 2: Setting and population of interest<\/p>\n
The elderly population is basically individuals who are above the age of 65. The dependent population share is calculated as the total youth and elderly population expressed as a percentage of the total population. The dependency rate of the elderly is described as the ratio between the working age (16-64) and the elderly population (Ioannidis Axfors & Contopoulos-Ioannidis 2020). Elderly population comparability is affected by the differences in and out of the country, in how the geography and regions of urban and rural societies are defined. In almost every country, the elderly people tend to be concentrated on specific places, which implies that a few regions will have to undergo a number of particular economic and social challenges due to the ageing population. These trends in demographics have many impacts on private and government use of pensions, education, healthcare and more generally economic welfare and growth. <\/p>\n
In today\u2019s world, there is better health care provisions thus people are living longer worldwide. Most people today can expect to live even beyond their thirties. By 2030, it is predicted that one in six people will be above the age of sixty. During that time, population share of the elderly will increase from one billion in 2020 to 1.4 billion. If you add another twenty years, the population of the elderly worldwide is expected to double that is 2.1 billion. Between 2020 and 2050, the population of individuals above 80 years is expected to triple reaching 426 million. High income countries such as Japan began the distribution of the population towards ageing people, and now low-income states are also undergoing this shit. In the next fifty years, two thirds of the global population of individuals aged above 60 years will come from middle- and low-income countries.<\/p>\n
In America, individuals over the age of 65 years do not live I nursing homes or other health care institutions but rather in the community. About 1.5 million, that is approximately 4.5% of the elderly live in nursing homes and those who live in assisted living facilities account for 2%, that is only one million people. The majority of the elderly, 33.4 million people or rather 93.5 percent, live in the community (Azarnivand et.al 2019). In addition, it is the federal policy of the United States to keep the elderly out of nursing homes and to move out those that are still at nursing homes out of them due to financial reasons. It is imperative that countries start planning on how care and housing will be provided to the elderly. <\/p>\n
The elderly aged above 85 are more likely to stay in nursing homes or similar settings than younger elderly people. Factually, those over the age of 85 years are four times as much likely to stay in long term care institutions as those aged from 84-75. Averagely, the elderly living in residential care facilities and nursing homes tend to have severe disabilities than the elderly living with their families, although more disabled elderly stays in the community and not in nursing homes. <\/p>\n
References<\/p>\n
Azarnivand, M., Alizadeh, F., Soltani, Z., Hojati, H., Dadgari, A., & Emamian, M. H. (2019). Low social support among the elderly. Iranian journal of public health, 48(9), 1756-1757.<\/p>\n
Ioannidis, J. P., Axfors, C., & Contopoulos-Ioannidis, D. G. (2020). Population-level COVID-19 mortality risk for non-elderly individuals overall and for non-elderly individuals without underlying diseases in pandemic epicenters. Environmental research, 188, 109890.<\/p>\n
Ren, L., Zheng, Y., Wu, L., Gu, Y., He, Y., Jiang, B., … & Li, J. (2018). Investigation of the prevalence of cognitive impairment and its risk factors within the elderly population in Shanghai, China. Scientific reports, 8(1), 1-9.<\/p>\n
Sotoudeh, G. R., Mohammadi, R., Mosallanezhad, Z., Viitasara, E., & Soares, J. J. (2018). The prevalence, circumstances and consequences of unintentional falls among elderly Iranians: A population study. Archives of gerontology and geriatrics, 79, 123-130.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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