Geriatrics is a branch of medicine dealing with the aged and the problems of the aging. The field gerontology includes of illness prevention and management, health maintenance, and promotions of quality of life for the aged. Research on a wide variety topic raging from family aspects of aging economic resources, and the delivery of long-term care states that gender, race, ethnicity, and social class consistently influenced the quality of the experience of aging. The experience of aging results from interaction of physical, mental, social and cultural factors. Aging varies across cultures. Culturally, aging as well as the treatment of the elderly, is often determined by the values of an ethnic group. Culture also may determine the way the older person views the process of aging as well as the manner in a more heterogeneous elderly population than any generation that proceed it can be expected. Health care professionals will need to know not only diseases and disorders common to a specific age group but those common to a particular ethnic group as well.Therapy With Older Adults Essay An appreciations of backgrounds can help the health care professional provide a personal approach when dealing with and meeting the needs of elderly patients. Aging is a board concept that includes physical changes in people’s bodies over adult life, psychological changes in their minds and mental capacities, social psychological changes in what they think and believe, and social changes in how they are viewed, what they expected of them. Aging is constantly evolving concept. Notions are a biologic age is more critical than chronologic age when determining health status of the elderly is valid. Aging is an individual and extremely variable process. The functional capacity of major body organs varies with advancing age. As one grows older, environmental and lifestyle factors affect the age-related functional changes in the body organ. The majority of the elderly seen in the health care setting have been diagnosed with at least one chronic condition. Individuals who in the 1970s would not be able to survives a debilitating illness, such as cancer or a catastrophic health events like a heart attack, can now live for more extended periods of time, sometimes with a variety of concurrent debilitating conditions. Although age is the most consistent and strongest predictor of risk for cancer Therapy With Older Adults Essay
for death from cancer, Management of the elderly cancer patient becomes complex because other chronic conditions, such as osteoarthritis, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and heart disease, must also be considered in their care. The attitude of health care providers towards older adults affect their health care. Unfortunately, research indicates that health care professionals are significantly more negative in their attitudes towards older patients than younger ones. This attitude must change if the health care provider is to have a positive interaction with the elderly patient. These attitude appear to be related to the pervasive stereotyping of the elderly, which serves to justify avoiding care and contact with them, as well as being reminders of our own mortality. Ageism is a term used to describe the stereotyping of and discrimination against elderly persons and is considered to be similar to that of the racism and sexism. It emphasized that frequently the elderly are perceived to be repulsive and that a distaste for the aging process itself exists. Ageism suggests that he majority of elderly are senile, miserable most of the time, and dependent rather than independent individuals. Therapy With Older Adults Essay
The media have also influenced on going stereotypical notions about the elderly. Health care providers must learn to appreciate the positive aspects of aging so that they can assists the elderly in having a positive experience with their imaging procedure.
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