Thesis (M. Nursing)--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2006. / Typescript. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Carolyn Hamlin Wenger. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-61).

Introduction: Thailand is experiencing a demographic change with an increasing elderly population. The care of elderly is mainly within the family, however changes that comes with modernization is leading to an increase in nursing homes and changing values. Purpose: The purpose is to explore and understand four professional social workers - with academic and practical experience, point of view on  how elderly care in Thailand is changing and what role social workers have in that change. The study aims to explore how the social workers perceive how elderly care and social work is developing in Thailand. Method: Semi structured interviews with four social workers were conducted after convenience sampling and snowball sampling. I have used an inductive approach when researching since the purpose in the beginning was general and later narrowed down. Theory: The theory used in this thesis is the system theory.Results: The results were divided into three main themes answering each research question. The social workers’ believed elderly’s role is changing and that depending on their children to provide for them has been replaced with elderly now taking care of themselves. The social workers’ working within the elderly field is few and their role can be administrative but also educating, empowering the elderly. Discussion: Social workers’ role as educators is important since the elderly reforms are new and may be unknown for some Thai elderly. The government has taken another path, focusing on home health care rather than expanding nursing homes. This sector is mainly private and fee based and expanding without demands on regulations and registration.

The elderly population is growing at unprecedented rates worldwide. The increased mortality and decline in fertility have greatly contributed to this and caused the ratio of elderly to the remaining populations in countries around the world to dramatically increase. Furthermore, these numbers show no signs of slowing and are expected to increase at quicker rates. With this, follows the need for better health care systems in order to maintain a good quality of life for this demographic. Of specific interest to this thesis are prevalent oral health conditions in the elderly. Conditions such as xerostomia, dental caries, and periodontal disease plague the elderly population. The research shows how much more prevalent and severe these oral health conditions are in the elderly population and aims to examine these along with effective means of treatment and care. Future measures should be taken to effectively stabilize oral health care for the elderly. Better pubic health care systems need to be put in place that address the access to care issue that exists within the elderly population, along with better promotion of preventative measures.

The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences of elderly people caring for HIV positive orphans on antiretroviral treatment in Swaziland. An exploratory, descriptive and contextual qualitative study based on a phenomenological approach was conducted. Data was collected by means of semi structured interviews with twelve elderly people purposively selected at Mbabane Government Hospital antiretroviral treatment clinic. The findings of the study highlighted that the elderly people were giving care under compulsion with very little support from the government, the community or other organisations. Their care giving capacity was compromised by many challenges which included the heavy burden of caring for a number of dependents; economic constraints; poor infrastructure; food insecurity, and physical, psychological and social constraints. The elderly were employing a number of coping strategies to counteract the challenges that they were facing. The researcher concluded that the elderly people were vital in ensuring the survival of sick orphans under the paediatric antiretroviral treatment programme in Swaziland if afforded sufficient support and empowerment. / Health Studies / M.A. (Public Health)

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:29:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2010-10-19Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:38:51Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 cassetari_faf_me_botfm.pdf: 787139 bytes, checksum: 37801fbfd4fbcc1f36e5f4afb8fefea6 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / As doenças crônicas são processos mórbidos de longa duração e que, apesar dos avanços médicos recentes, muitas delas ainda são incuráveis. Inclusive, a Doença Renal Crônica (DRC) está se tornando uma doença de grande impacto social, pois vem acometendo um número cada vez maior de pessoas, onde várias complicações podem ocorrer no paciente com Insuficiência Renal Crônica (IRC) devido ao tratamento hemodialítico a que são submetidos. Assim sendo, é necessário compreender o significado da hemodiálise para o doente renal crônico e também o impacto desse tratamento na vida do paciente, pois o tema “qualidade de vida do paciente renal crônico em programa de hemodiálise” ainda é pouco conhecido, divulgado e analisado, seja nacional ou internacionalmente. Portanto, o objetivo deste estudo é avaliar a qualidade de vida dos pacientes idosos com IRC em tratamento hemodialítico no setor de hemodiálise da cidade de Avaré – SP, além de avaliar o perfil sócio-demográfico dos pacientes idosos em tratamento hemodialítico no setor de hemodiálise da referida cidade, como sexo, procedência, estado civil, escolaridade, tempo de tratamento na hemodiálise e etiologia da IRC, ressaltando que o efeito da cronicidade não se resume no resultado de uma doença agindo isoladamente em um único individuo e sim em inúmeras vidas vividas sob circunstâncias especiais e limitantes, não somente do doente, mas também de outras pessoas que compõem sua rede social, envolvendo ritos de passagem de um mundo sem doença para um mundo com doença. Aplicou se o questionário SF36 contendo oito domínios e analise estatística utilizado foi o SAS for Windows 1.9.3 e utilizou de frequências e proporções para as variáveis qualitativas e média e desvio padrão para as variáveis quantitativas. Através da pesquisa realizada com os pacientes em tratamento pode-se concluir... / Chronic diseases are long-term disease processes and that, despite recent medical advances, many of them are still incurable. Including the Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is becoming a disease of great social impact, for it affects a growing number of people, where several complications can occur in patients with chronic renal failure (CRF) due to hemodialysis that are submitted. It is therefore necessary to understand the meaning of hemodialysis for chronic kidney disease and the impact of such therapy in the patient's life, because the theme of quality of life of chronic renal patients undergoing hemodialysis is little known, disseminated and analyzed either nationally or internationally. Therefore, the objective is to assess the quality of life of elderly patients with CRF on hemodialysis in the hemodialysis unit of the city of Avare - SP, in addition to assessing the socio-demographic profile of elderly patients on hemodialysis in the hemodialysis unit of that City on sex, origin, marital status, education, treatment time in hemodialysis and etiology of CRF, stressing that the effect of chronicity is not just the result of a disease acting alone in a single individual but rather in lives lived under many circumstances special and limiting, not only the patient but also other people who make your social network, involving rites of passage from one world to a world without disease with disease. Applied the questionnaire containing eight SF36 domains and statistical analysis used was SAS for Windows 1.9.3 and used the frequencies and proportions for qualitative variables and mean and standard deviation for quantitative variables. Through research conducted with patients in treatment can conclude that CRF, while non-communicable chronic disease and its treatment still for long periods, affects many aspects of life of patients, hence the importance of study and assessment of QOL of renal... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

The purpose of this research was to ascertain how primary nursing care is perceived by both the elderly infirm living in the community and their district nurses. How the perceptions of needs for care were translated into action and the sort of expectations they had and results they achieved. The research also examined whether or not differences in nursing care patterns occurred between those nurses working within a primary health care team and those aligned to a number of single-handed general practices. The main research instrument was in the form of interview schedules. These contained structured and open ended questions as well as Likert assessment scales, and were administered by the researcher to patients, nurses and general practitioners at various stages of care. Over a period of 18 months a total of two-hundred patients and their district nurses and general practitioners from one health district participated. The results were analysed with the help of a computerised statistical package for social science. The findings indicate that district nurses' perception of patient needs is illness focused and, as such, prescribe and give nursing care on the basis of the medical model. The patients' perceive their state of health mainly in terms of discomfort and disability and their effects. As their problems manifest themselves to a great extent in multiple health as well as social issues as a legacy of past life events, a shift from the medical towards the social model of care seems, therefore, of prime importance. There is little doubt that where district nurses become involved with the elderly infirm person she becomes the focal health care professional support. It seems that this emphasis on the district nurse becoming the key member of the primary health care team produces a whole new set of values. This approach has implications not only for post basic nurse training but also demands a change of attitude towards organisational support. As the role of the district nurses as a fully participant health care team member in Attachment schemes has not been established conclusively in this research it is important to consider professional support by strengthening the peer reference group. These findings and their limitations are discussed and areas of further research identified.

Introduction: About one in four seniors have periodontal disease and significant disparities have been shown to exist between some population groups. This study aimed to ascertain if differences exist in oral health conditions among statistical zones in Tennessee divided into east, middle and western zones. We also sought to explore factors predicting poor oral health outcomes in these zones. We postulated that oral health would differ between at least two zones in Tennessee and socio-demographic and socio-economic factors would predict oral health outcome. Methods: We combined data from the Behavioral Risk Surveillance System using Data from years 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 (n= 5181). Outcome variable was number of permanent teeth removed which was ordered as- none, one to five, six or more but not all and all. Zones were divided into East Tennessee comprising- Kingsport-Bristol-Bristol Tennessee-Virginia metropolitan statistical area, Knoxville, Tennessee Metropolitan Statistical Area. Middle/Central Tennessee comprising Chattanooga, Tennessee-Georgia, Metropolitan Statistical Area, Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tennessee Metropolitan Statistical Area and West Tennessee including Memphis, Tennessee-Memphis-Arizona, Metropolitan Statistical Area. Other independent variables included in our models were general health, could not see a doctor because of cost, history of diabetes, smoked at least 100 cigarettes, use of smokeless tobacco products, adults who had visited a dentist and poor physical health. Covariates were income level, education level, employment status, race/ethnicity, year and marital status. Descriptive statistics and initial univariate analysis were done. Variables significant at alpha level of 0.05 were included in the final adjusted Ordinal Logistic regression model with logit link function. Results: From our sample, 37.1% were males and 67.9% were females. Most (43.4%) were married, most had a high school level of education (34%), most were retired (73.5%) and a higher percentage (12.4%) earned less than 25,000 per annum from all sources. A higher number were White (62.7%), and smokers (51.4%) and 31% had at least one permanent tooth removed. All variables and covariates except poor physical and mental health were significantly associated with the outcome variable (P<0.05). On adjusting for covariates, sex, income, employment status and zone of residence in Tennessee were significantly associated with a difference in the number of permanent teeth removed. The observed difference between the Eastern part of Tennessee and the Western part of Tennessee was significantly. Conclusion: Zone of residence, sex, employment status and income predict oral health outcomes in Tennessee. People in East Tennessee are more likely to have increased permanent teeth removed compared to those in the west.

With the rapid development of mobile device technology, smartphones are now not only the tool for young people but also for elderly people. However, the complicated steps of interacting with smartphones are stopping them from having a good user experience. One of the reasons is that application designers do not take consideration of the user group of elderly people. Our pilot survey shows that most elderly people lack the skills required to use a smartphone without obstacles, like typing. We also conducted an experiment with 8 participants that targeting on the usability of a daily used application, Contact List (CL), and based on a Chinese language system. We developed an android application that proposed a new method of showing the contact list according to the language usage of Chinese for this study. By asking participants to finish the same tasks on the traditional CL applications on their phones or on our application and observing their operations, we obtained useful feedback in terms of usability issues. Our experiment also tried to find out whether the method we proposed in the new application can lead to a better user experience for elderly people.

The older adult population is growing. Many seniors will need more care in order to stay at home, and some will find it necessary to move into an institutional setting (National Institute on Aging, 2017). However, there is a growing trend for senior adults to want to remain at home and age in place. Occupational therapy practitioners whose work takes place in home settings have the opportunity to enable these individuals to preserve their independence. Recent advancements in smart home technology provide applications for this form of assistive technology in situations where an older person with a disability can remain in the home because of advances in (Mahoney et al., 2009; Mann et al., 1999; Tomita et al., 2007; van Hoof et al., 2011) automation or remote controlling that minimize the assistance needed from others. However, older adults may not have the base knowledge to set up these devices for themselves. Occupational therapy practitioners can serve as a bridge to enable older adults to use smart home technology in their homes by bringing together their expertise on home modification, assistive technology, and understanding of the person, environment, and activity/occupation (Maitra & Vasquez, 2011; Waite, 2015). This proposed program is designed to empower occupational therapy practitioners to be the bridge that enables older adults to use smart home technology. It is an evidence-based, theory-driven workshop that will provide instruction on different aspects of smart home technology, including guidelines for assessment, education, and implementation with older adult clients. Within a span of eight hours, instruction will include short lectures and videos, as well as opportunities for hands-on practice using case studies and actual work with smart home technology. Occupational therapy practitioners will become a knowledgeable part of the home care modification team; they will be prepared to apply a client-centered understanding of smart home technology and will have acquired the professional terminology to discuss smart home technology and its application for home modification with other non-health care professionals. Participants will also gain the tools to advocate for occupational therapy and smart home assistive technology to family members, caregivers, manufacturers and insurance providers.

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