Caregiving Considerations
Undergraduate Nursing Students' Healthy Ageing Literacy: Understanding Positive Aging Responses to Impact Curriculum Objectives
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Joanne Lewis
Healthy aging frameworks prioritize opportunities for good health and wellbeing in older people to enable them to enjoy active participation in society, independence, and quality of life. Getting older should be seen as a time of opportunity whereby societies and communities benefit from the skills, experience, and participation of older people. This view of older people as valuable and the promotion of positive aging, is however challenged by most health curriculum which overall remains focused on the disease model of aging. An understanding of knowledge and awareness of healthy aging in nursing students will inform the gaps in curriculum objectives which need to be addressed to improve healthy aging literacy in the nursing workforce. A shift in the discourse of healthcare providers from a focus on illness to wellness, will impact policy and public perspectives of aging. This study describes the knowledge and perceptions of healthy ageing in a cohort of undergraduate nursing students. The outcomes of the investigation will be reviewed alongside existing curriculum for teaching and learning activities in this area. A short answer survey is administered to a cohort of undergraduate nursing students. The questions for the survey were developed using the Active Aging Index Tool.
Effective Clinical Communication with Our Elders: Understanding What Older People Want and How We Can Improve
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rosie Crone
The focus of this study is effective patient communication with older people. It reviews the current literature from a practical perspective. Key topics include addressing the impact of age on health literacy and cognition in normal ageing - and how this may impact on learning; geragogy; the value or not of assessment of health literacy in a clinical context; the differences in approaching shared decision making; and how to implement strategies for effective communication.
Quality of Life of Working Carers in Super-aging Japan: An Exploratory Study on Factors that Influence Carer’s Quality of Life
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mai Yamaguchi, Ikushi Yamaguchi, Hiromi Nakamura, Stacey Rand, Kamilla Razik, Akemi Matsuzawa, Machiko Ohara, Keiko Hirose, Eiko Hhorikoshi
For about half of more than six-million Japanese carers, balancing work and long-term care for frail older adults is very important. The Japanese government has been making an effort to stop carers leaving, but studies on working carers from carers’ Quality of Life (QOL) perspectives are limited. Therefore, the purpose of this presentation is to explain QOL of working carers based on analyses of the Japanese-version Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit for Carers (ASCOT-Carer) and to explore factors which influence their QOL. To achieve this, we conducted a web survey for Japanese working carers taking care of the users of Long-term Care services (N=600 ; Age M=51.6, SD=8.9) in March, 2018. We measured their QOL using Japanese version of the ASCOT-Carer SCT4 (7 domains) and analysed the relationship between their QOL and factors such as gender, health, marital status, satisfaction, loneliness, etc. With data analyses, we found working carers who indicated bad health conditions and dissatisfaction with human relationships at workplace were more likely have lower QOL scores than those who did not. In addition, the score of QOL of married working carers were higher than those of single carers. Gender and level of care-needs of the users were not related to QOL. Our findings suggest that the health condition of working carers and working situations are one of the main factors to worsen their QOL. Further analyses will be needed. Our research was supported by JSPS, KAKENHI-B 16H03715.
GP Attitudes, Perceptions, and Experiences of Frailty and Frailty Screening: A Qualitative Study
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rachel Ambagtsheer
Frailty is gaining attention as a relatively common condition among older people, with significant negative impacts on both individuals and health systems worldwide. Emerging evidence suggests that frailty may be reversible with appropriate intervention, leading to proposals that the primary care setting is an ideal context for the proactive identification and management of frailty. Most commonly however, care of the frail older person is dominated by acute care and crisis management. In Australia, little is known about how primary care providers view frailty, which is problematic given the potential for improved prevention and management of frailty through primary care initiatives. Consequently, our qualitative descriptive study aims to explore the attitudes, perceptions, and experiences of Australian GPs towards frailty and frailty screening. We conducted three focus groups with 22 General Practitioners (GPs) in urban and rural South Australia. Using framework analysis we identified the following three preliminary themes reflecting GPs perspectives on frailty and frailty screening: (I) Frailty as a state of progressive functional decline and increased risk of negative outcomes; (II) the use of informal 'intuitive' screening rather than validated screening tools to recognise frailty among older patients, and (III) mixed attitudes towards the use of screening tools in general practice. A number of key barriers and enablers to frailty identification, treatment, and the integration of screening with usual care were also identified, and implications for policy and practice are discussed.
