There is growing awareness of the benefits of rehabilitation both in Australia and overseas. While the provision of rehabilitation services is not new, recognition of this type of health service as an integral part of health care has been linked to changes in the provision of acute care services, advances in medical technology, improvements in the management of trauma and an ageing population. Despite this, little attention has been paid to nursing's contribution to patient rehabilitation in Australia. The aim of this grounded theory study, therefore, was to collect and analyse nurses' reports of their contributions to patient rehabilitation and to describe and analyse contextual factors influencing that contribution. Data were collected during interviews with registered and enrolled nurses working in five inpatient rehabilitation units in New South Wales and during observation of the nurses' everyday practice. A total of 53 nurses participated in the study, 35 registered nurses and 18 enrolled nurses. Grounded theory, informed by the theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism, was used to guide data analysis, the ongoing collection of data and the generation of a substantive theory. The findings revealed six major categories. One was an everyday problem labelled incongruence between nurses' and patients' understandings and expectations of rehabilitation. Another category, labelled coaching patients to self-care, described how nurses independently negotiated the everyday problem of incongruence. The remaining four categories captured conditions in the inpatient context which influenced how nurses could contribute to patient rehabilitation. Two categories, labelled segregation: divided and dividing work practices between nursing and allied health and role ambiguity, were powerful in shaping nursing's contribution as they acted individually and synergistically to constrain nursing's contribution to patient rehabilitation. The other two categories, labelled distancing to manage systemic constraints and grasping the nettle to realise nursing's potential, represent the mutually exclusive strategies nurses used in response to segregation and role ambiguity. From exploration of the relationship between the six categories, the core category and an interactive grounded theory called opting in and opting out emerged. In turn, this grounded theory reveals nursing's contribution to inpatient rehabilitation as well as contextual conditions constraining that contribution. The significance of these findings is made manifest through their contribution to the advancement of nursing knowledge and through implications for nursing practice and education, rehabilitation service delivery and research.

People are getting older in the world and the aging population is increasing each year which lead to a higher demand of the society to care for the elderly population. In the year of 2050 there will be over 2 billion elderly people in the world and most of them will live in the developing countries. 1 The improved healthcare has led to peoples’ wealth and longer live in the world. Though one can see ageing as a successful achievement, there is things that need to be improved in the society. The ageing population is getting larger and the age discrimination and loneliness among elderly is one of the largest concerns to deal with within this context. This thesis will try to get an understanding of the role of the elderly in society and improve the conditions for an ageing population. Therefore, one will investigate in this master thesis; "How to adapt society for an ageing population?"

The main objective of diploma thesis is to analyze and evaluate the situation of elder employees on the labour market in the Czech republic, where as in others developed countries of European union has negative demographic evolution. The first of all are mentioned fundamental demographic indicators including expected predictions for the future, next and also crucial part of thesis is dedicated to labour market with regards to changing structure in age structure of population. The group of elder workers is submitted to deeper analysis according to several standpoints such as reached education, gender or profession. The rest space is devoted to options and suggestions for this endangered group on the labour market, including examples of good practice from abroad. Thesis conclusion is focused on comparison with states of European union and fulfilling objectives in terms of European strategies.

No / and methods This report is derived from a review of the research evidence on physical activity interventions and initiatives, interventions to support self-management/ self-care of long-term conditions and digitally enabled care services and technologies. The aim was to use existing evidence to envision future services and associated infrastructure. The Evidence Review involved scoping the literature for topics researched and to determine the nature of that research. Rapid-scoping review methods were applied to trusted sources, and searches for specific key texts were conducted. A separate search was conducted to identify literature relevant to each domain. A narrative was then produced from the review findings. Review findings The evidence base for physical activity interventions is growing. There has been significant recent investment in the development and evaluation of interventions to promote activity and reduce sedentary behaviour at the individual, community and population levels. The evidence to link higher levels of physical activity to positive health outcomes and disease prevention is convincing, both in ‘well’ populations and in those with long-term health conditions. Self-management interventions are heterogeneous in nature but common elements exist across the majority of them. The consensus in the literature is that self-management will become increasingly important due to unsustainable demands upon services. Evaluation of selfmanagement interventions reveals a small but varying effect across a wide range of outcomes. However, little is known about the mechanisms by which these interventions work and how these might vary across differing conditions and populations. Technology is being increasingly used to support service delivery in a wide range of contexts, and for the delivery of a variety of interventions including fitness and self-management. There is strong evidence supporting the use of technology for remote monitoring of people with longterm conditions, but further research is required. Implications Digital applications are already altering established patterns of service delivery. The findings presented here reveal varying results of efficacy which do not accord with the optimistic future described in various envisaging reports. Research has yet to consider unwanted and unforeseen effects of moving towards technology-enabled services. It is also important to consider how to effectively harness new health data emerging from the use of eHealth systems, technology-enabled services and health-tracking devices. There is an ongoing requirement to evaluate new technologies and technology-enabled services in ways that provide both timely and robust answers, particularly as technology development is a continually moving target. These considerations are discussed in this report. / The evidence review was commissioned as part of the Foresight future of an ageing population project

Essay 1 (with Juha Alho and Edward Palmer):  All around the world, public pension schemes are moving in the direction of non-financial (NDC) and financial defined contribution (DC) schemes.  Both rely on accurate projections of life expectancy in the creation of annuities. Accurate projections are critical for system stability, individual utility and inter-generational welfare. This paper suggests a path-breaking innovation that changes the perspective from the Lee-carter (LC) family of trend models which assume a constant rate of change in mortality over time. Our approach is to project the cohort life expectancy on basis of the specific cohort rate of change in mortality. This relaxes the strong trend assumption underlying the LC model, which is the reason why LC model does not work well in the phase of accelerating or decelerating mortality. We use unisex mortality data for $8$ countries to test the performance of our approach both ex-post and ex-ante. The ex-post experiment shows that our approach generally performs better when the rate of change in mortality is accelerating and performs as well as LC model when the rate of change is time-invariant. The ex-ante experiment, on the other hand, shows that our model almost always delivers higher projection of remaining life expectancy than the LC model for the more recent cohorts, which is consistent with the ex-post experimental results. / Essay 2:  Due to the systematic underestimation of cohort life expectancy, NDC pension schemes face a financial risk that can leads to inter-generational unfairness, given the current practice. This paper proposes an alternative method of computing annuity to address this problem. The proposal is to adjust the annuity based on re-estimations of the remaining life expectancy at intervals after retirement, but only up to a ceiling age. The scheme is assessed using 208 cohort annuity pools from eight sample countries. This experiment shows that the proposed scheme succeeds in reducing the inter-generational unfairness for 60-80% of the cohort annuity pools, compared to current practice of fixing the annuity at age 65. Because the adjustment is borne by the relatively large group of younger persons, the per capita change in utility is rather small assuming risk neutrality. / Essay 3:  This paper studies how the incentive to retire in a DC (NDC) scheme is influenced by engaging private information on life expectancy. This is an important question since the decisions made under the two scenarios, optimizing using the private life expectancy or the cohort average made available by the pension provider, create different welfare and financial outcomes. The analytical framework is a standard life-cycle model, accounting for monetary gain from work and non-monetary gain from leisure. The unique feature here is that the individual life expectancy is an explicit driver of disutility of work. The theoretical result is that prevailing private information of a longer-than-average life expectancy can lead to both advancing and delaying retirement, depending on other factors determining utility. The numerical example using Swedish data proves the theoretical results and suggests a rather small average impact on the choice of retirement by engaging private information of life expectancy. / Essay 4:   Pensions in the increasingly popular Notional Defined Contribution (NDC) Pay-as-You-Go Schemes are granted based on cohort-specific life expectancy, regardless socioeconomic differences. This risks perverse intra-generational and unintended inter-generational transfers. This paper introduces an alternative with separate annuity pools for different socioeconomic classes. Using unique Swedish data and the Swedish NDC pension system as an example, the analysis shows a significant gap in life expectancy between socioeconomic classes defined by occupation. In the Swedish context, this implies a perverse transfer of 5% of the pension capital from the manual workers to the non-manual workers, which can be abolished by using the group plan. In addition, the group plan also lessens the risk of inter-generational transfers resulting from the gap in life expectancy.

InterRAI is an internationally validated assessment tool used in many different contexts to assist different groups of people and patients to live fuller, safer and more productive lives. In 2008, the New Zealand Ministry of Health, after the completion a trial of the interRAI – Home Care assessment tool in the District Health Board, rolled out implementation of the interRAI – Home Care tool throughout New Zealand’s 21 District Health Boards. The Quality of Life survey itself is currently being assessed and trialled throughout the world as a follow-up to the Home Care assessment. It will enable researchers and assessors to enable for a comprehensive perspective by bringing together the views of both service providers and recipients of care service. The assessments will be completed by the person directly, as a self assessment, or through interview The overall research aim of the study itself is to evaluate the adequacy of the interRAI Quality of Life survey in assessing the Quality of Life issues and needs of the elderly living in their own homes in the community with some sort of publicly funded health care, social or community support such as meals on wheels, personal care, etc., for the purpose of demonstrating the importance of it as a useful tool within New Zealand. The objectives of the research are as follows: • Objective 1 - To review the management and application of quality of life indicators for the elderly. • Objective 2 – To understand the pressures which an ageing population places on public policy. • Objective 3 - To consider how quality of life measures can best be applied alongside interRAI in New Zealand. The research itself focused on the Quality of Life of thirty participants. Each participant was first assessed through an interRAI – HC assessment at their own home by an assessor from the Canterbury District Health Board. Upon completion of the assessment, they were given the option of being contacted by the researcher about participation in the interRAI Quality of Life Survey. Contact by the researcher by telephone ensued, which was then followed up by a face to face information session at the home of the participant. At this time, thirty out of thirty one potential participants decided to sign the informed consent form for participation. As the Quality of Life Survey itself is self reported, each participant was free to read through the survey and answer for themselves questions regarding their thoughts about their own quality of life. Participants responded to forty six statements from nine different domains on the Quality of Life Survey. Overall results showed a majority of responses of ‘Always’, which were positive. Areas of concern which emerged from the data were of possible issues of social isolation and unresolved emotional health. Limitations of the research included factors such as the small sample size of thirty, the geography of the study which was limited to Christchurch, and the fact that there was no follow up visit to the first and only interview. In conclusion, it is apparent that a larger trial throughout the District Health Board is required to overcome the aforementioned limitations of sample size and geography. Also, it is imperative that a follow-up visit is scheduled after the initial visit to allow for intervention into quality of life issues which emerge from the participant’s self-assessment.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to evaluate the age and aging of the European population. At present, the aging process is affecting most countries in the Word. It occurs mainly in advanced countries, which includes most of the European countries. Population aging is linked to the process of the second demographic transition, which results in a change of the shares of the child´s and the old population. The main objective is to evaluate the age of individual regions (states) of Europe, according to various indicators, and thereafter to identify sub-regions in Europe according to the age of the population based on multidimensional statistical methods (point method, standardized variable method, factor and cluster analysis).

Active ageing of the Czech Republic population in European context Abstract Population ageing is a global process. The active ageing concept aims to enhance life quality and expand participation in society. Active ageing index is a tool for policymakers. The purpose of index is obtaining evidences for public policies planning for older people. The first goal of this thesis is to explore the current situation of active ageing in the Czech Republic, and the second goal is to provide information of domains which do not reach their potential and to improve situation in these domains, that would enhance the life quality of elders. An alternative methodology of Active ageing index scores interpreting is presented in the thesis to support the second goal. The author considers Active ageing index to be an adequate tool for active ageing evaluation, however it does not provide sufficient information on what actions need to be taken to improve active ageing conditions. For this reason an alternative interpretation methodology is presented. The Czech Republic Active Ageing Index value is 34.4 point. It ranks the Czech Republic among slightly above average countries. Actions on volunteering, physical activity, lifelong learning and computer skills need to be taken to improve active ageing conditions. Keywords:...

No description available.

A human thermoregulation model has been adapted for predicting the thermal response of Typical Older Persons. The model known as the Older Persons Model predicts the core body temperature and regulatory responses of the older people in environmental exposures of cold, warm and hot. The model was developed by modifying an existing dynamic human thermoregulation model using anthropometric and thermo-physical properties of older people. The Model defines the body as two interrelating systems of the body structure (passive system) and the control system of the central nervous system (active system). The Older person's passive system of the model was developed by meticulously extracting relevant experimental data from selected published research works relating to anthropometric and thermo-physical properties of older people. The resultant body structure (passive system) is a multi-segmented representation of a Typical Older Person. The active system (central nervous system) was developed by the application of a novel optimization method based on the working principles of Genetic Algorithms. The use of Genetic Algorithm enables the complex characteristics of the central nervous system of the older persons to be well represented and evaluated based on available data. Active system control signal coefficients for sweating, shivering, vasodilation and vasoconstriction were explicitly derived based on experimental data sourced from literature. The Older Persons Model has been validated using independent experimental data and its results show good agreement with measured data. Furthermore, the Older Persons Model has been applied to several test cases extracted from published literature and its results show good agreement with published findings on the thermal behaviour of older persons. An interview study conducted as part of this research revealed that, professionals (built environment specialists) found the Older Persons Model useful in assisting to further understand the thermal response of the older persons. In conclusion, the adaptation of an existing human thermoregulation model has resulted in a new model, which allows improved prediction of heat and cold strain of the older person although there exist limitations.