Elderly Peoples' Experiences of Nursing Homes Assignment Sample

• Subject Name : Nursing

Older Age People Who Move Into Nursing Homes

As people move towards increasing age, their demand for receiving complex care also increases. Older and vulnerable people need to have multidisciplinary care, which could be gain when they move into a nursing home. Going into a nursing home is associated with a better quality of life as they are given quality care and support. In addition to that, their needs and demands are met. They are also given a sense of control and empowerment which enhance their quality of life. However, the majority of older individuals wish to stay at their place only but for their condition, they must require formal and informal support (Freeman et al., 2017). There are multiple reasons due to which older people have to move into a nursing home. It can be because of the mental or physical disease, alterations in family structures, divorce, financial problems, migration and so on. Due to coming to the nursing home, the older people could feel this as a stressful event in their life. They can also evoke mental consequences which are negative in nature such as rejection from people, depression, insecurity or mental tension. Also, they might feel that their social status will be completely changed and there will be a decrease in their physical activities. With that, older people remained concerned about their engagements and interactions with people. They might also feel bad for losing their privacy and home. They can also have a negative impact due to changed personal lifestyle and not being able to live with their family members and friends (Mohammadinia et al., 2017). Older people thus can experience mental, social and psychological changes due to moving to the nursing home. The transition to a nursing home could be made easier if they are allowed to be engaged in domestic chores and they are allowed to have moments of privacy so that they feel like they are at home. With that, they should also be involved in daily activities and they should be supported to have a normal routine in the nursing home. They should be provided care which is full of respect and dignity (Rijnaard et al., 2016).

The work done by Erik Erikson talks about the age of the person and the psychological crisis or task that shape them in the particular age group. It also highlights which kind of virtue is developed during a particular age. Erikson's theory consists of multiple stages of psychosocial development starting from infant and going up to the age until the person became old. Erikson has distributed age group from infant to 18 months, 18 months to 3 years, 3 to 5 years, 5-13 years, 13-21 years, 21-39 years, 40- 65 years and then 65 years and beyond. He explained that crisis would be trust and mistrust, autonomy and Shame, Initiative and guilt, industry and inferiority, identity and confusion, intimacy and isolation, generativity and stagnation, integrity and despair respectively in these. Therefore, the crisis that is faced by older adults is integrity and despair (Gilleard & Higgs, 2016). Integrity in older people can be referred to as the acceptance of the life cycle that one person now has to have and a sense of wholeness and coherence. Whereas, a person experience despair when aspects of future, present or past is difficult for him to put together in a meaningful whole. Therefore, later at life, people have to face both crises but they should be balanced. Also, in this stage, people gain wisdom and they also tend to accept their final fate that is death (Dezutter, Toussaint & Leijssen, 2016).

Therefore, living in a nursing home could trigger older individuals to reflect on their past action or onto their life and their finality. Individuals could also feel depressed. They might also not be satisfied with their life or they may be at high risk of developing illnesses. Hence, it is problematic for people to cope with situations. So, for these individuals, nurses in the nursing home must involve them in developmental tasks that would increase the level of their life satisfaction and decrease the symptoms of depression. Also, the care which is mostly given to the older adults is physical in nature, as a result, they could also be given psychological help that would help them in balancing their integrity and despair that would eventually lessen their depression and increase their quality of life. With that, some intervention strategies could also be applied to enhance integrity in people. They could be provided with guided life review so that they can look back on their life by the help of a professional. Life review ultimately would achieve a healthy balance among despair and integrity so that well being could be enhanced in older people (Dezutter, Toussaint & Dewitte, 2020). 

References for Elderly Peoples' Experiences of Nursing Homes

Dezutter, J., Toussaint, L., & Dewitte, L. (2020). Finding a balance between integrity and despair: A challenging task for older adults in residential care. Journal of Adult Development, 27(2), 147-156. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-019-09332-1

Dezutter, J., Toussaint, L., & Leijssen, M. (2016). Forgiveness, ego-integrity, and depressive symptoms in community-dwelling and residential elderly adults. The Journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 71(5), 786–797. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbu146

Freeman, S., Bishop, K., Spirgiene, L., Koopmans, E., Botelho, F. C., Fyfe, T., Xiong, B., Patchett, S., & MacLeod, M. (2017). Factors affecting residents transition from long term care facilities to the community: A scoping review. BMC Health Services Research, 17(1), 689. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-017-2571-y

Gilleard, C., & Higgs, P. (2016). Connecting life span development with the sociology of the life course: A new direction. Sociology, 50(2), 301–315. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038515577906

Mohammadinia, N., Rezaei, M. A., & Atashzadeh-Shoorideh, F. (2017). Elderly peoples' experiences of nursing homes in Bam city: A qualitative study. Electronic Physician, 9(8), 5015–5023. https://doi.org/10.19082/5015

Rijnaard, M. D., van Hoof, J., Janssen, B. M., Verbeek, H., Pocornie, W., Eijkelenboom, A., Beerens, H. C., Molony, S. L., & Wouters, E. J. (2016). The factors influencing the sense of home in nursing homes: A systematic review from the perspective of residents. Journal of Aging Research, 2016, 6143645. https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/6143645

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