UNIT 3: NURSING CARE IN THE ELDERLY

To implement nursing care for the elderly are fundamental values ​​of sensitivity, empathy, caring attitude, dedication, ethics, professional training and educational attitudes. Furthermore, humanized care is considered high value in the success of the actions of caring for the elderly.

Key points in the care of the elderly are:

- Negotiate with the aged care.

- Encourage independence.

- To understand and strengthen the individuality.

- Recognize and encourage the proper management of ethical and bioethical issues.

- Mobilize family and community resources to support.

- Educate to promote self-care.

- Reduce environmental risk factors.

- Internalizing the old man about the importance of their being and their work.

- Support and promote interdisciplinary work.

- To guide people of all ages to a healthy aging process.

- Teaching and support health caregivers.

- Respect the rights of the elderly and make sure others do the same.

- To guide and promote the quality of care.

- To offer optimism and hope.

- Implement restorative measures and quality of life.

- Coordinate the services of health promotion.

- Assume the nursing process as a technology for the health care of the elderly.

The nursing process is first carried out an integral assessment of the elderly. Following diagnoses are selected. Those that occur most often in the elderly are:

1. Hopelessness.

2. Self-care deficit.

3. Disuse syndrome.

4. High risk of injury.

5. Social isolation.

Each one should take into account the culture and the geographical environment in which the elderly live.

Then, carry out the planning of care, to be developed jointly with the old man and his family.

Finally, implement nursing interventions, which shall be to:

·         Provide direct care to the benefit of the elderly, respecting their autonomy and rescuing their human dignity.

·         Encourage the establishment of an empathic relationship with the old man and his family as immediate support, promoting continuity of nursing interventions.

·         Generate educational activities and provide basic elements to support the integration of the elderly to their family and society.

·         Avoid limitations or dependencies of the elderly. Emphasize strategies that allow them to fend for himself.

·         Facilitate the scope of the achievements in the elderly.

REFERENCES:

-          Nursing Intervention Guide Nursing Care to the elderly at their homes and ambulatory. Colombia: Social Security Institute, 2000. Available at: http://acofaen.org.co/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/GUIA-5-ANCIANOS.pdf