Managing Medical Matters (Asynchronous - Online Only)
The Impact of Social Isolation Due to COVID-19 on Fear of Falling in Aging Adults: Social Community Impact View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jennifer Holbein, Kieran Mullen, Emma Hanson
This qualitative research study explores the effects of COVID-19 on the fear of falling in the aging adult population as well as the efficacy of the fall prevention course, A Matter of Balance. The study analyzed the fear of falling in a rural community of aging adults in Northfield, Minnesota. It was the only face-to-face fall prevention course in Minnesota offered during the pre-vaccination times of COVID-19, which provided a unique set of data. After the intervention course, semi-structured interviews identified the importance of a social community in decreasing fear of falling. The research also identified the importance of both physiological and psychological interventions within the fear of falling. The isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic elevated the importance of social community in the aging population in regards to fall prevention. This research yields future possibilities to explore further relationships between aspects of the social community and other benefits for aging adults.
End of Life Care in Care Homes: A Mixed-methods Study of Dying in English Care Homes View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Diana Teggi
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, care homes have been in the eye of the storm. A large proportion of COVID deaths in England and Europe has come from those living in care homes. This should come as little surprise given the prevalence of chronic underlying conditions in the care home population (Teggi 2020) and that 28% of all deaths in England are of care home residents (NEoLCIN 2017). However, very little is known about dying and end of life care (EOLC) in care homes, the last multi-sited ethnographic study on the topic being more than 25 years-old (Sidell et al. 1995). This paper presents the findings from a mixed-methods study of EOLC in English care homes. It shows that EOLC in care homes is shaped by: (1) the uncertainty of death’s timing in old age; (2) the need for staff to predict and anticipate the time of residents’ dying; (3) the need to balance institutional pressures to keep residents alive (or let them die) with residents’ agency and best interest; and (4) staffing levels enabling or disabling carers to sit and just ‘be with’ residents at the EOL. The study depicts a complicate picture of failing bodies, existential uncertainty, EOLC governance and relationships of care between staff and residents that challenges received notions of medicalisation, institutionalisation and social death in very old age. This knowledge is crucial in the wake of a pandemic that risks stigmatising care homes once again as places for bad living and bad dying.
Featured Gerontology Knowledge Translational Research: The Science of Moving Aging Research into Policy and Implementation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sonia Pascua, Daniel Dasig Jr
Knowledge derived from the research and experience in the aging and older adults can be processed and integrated into public policies and programs. This study presents a multidisciplinary investigation of societal changes resulting from an aging population. Knowledge translation research in gerontology is the scientific study of the methods to promote the uptake of research findings by aging patients, health care providers, organizations, and policymakers. The barriers and facilitators that influence evidence-based gerontology, frameworks, and tools are also discussed. Public policy decisions are important toward the elderly populations’ better quality of life and improving parameters of daily living through evidence-based practice.
Turkey's Senior Citizens In Light of Medicalization of Everyday Life and "Successful Aging` View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Poyraz Kolluoglu, Melek Ipek
Turkey, as a country reflecting the socio-economic peculiarities of the global south, is going through a unique demographic process with its unprecedentedly decreasing birth rates for a developing country and rapidly aging population, which have limited accesses to related social services and social policy applications.As a belated modern milieu, which is not isolated from the neoliberal processes along the axis of sociocultural domains, it appears to be Turkey’s senior citizens too is left with no choice to but maintain a “successful aging” process in light of the medicalization of everyday life and responsibility attributed to the self-creating individual. Moreover, the pandemic has also complicated the positionality of these senior citizens in the eyes of public in and through failed, populist-minded public health policies, which have undermined the respected status of many segments in the traditionalist Middle East culture. In our paper, we seek answers for various question obtained from field of sociology of health by relying on empirical evidence derived from the field of social work as well as public discourses reflected on various media sources. In this manner, we map the lifeworld of seniors, their changing perceptions on public health policies and social services through the prism of class, gender, and social policy.
Food Insecure COPD Patients and Healthcare Utilization View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kristine Mendoza
Despite advances in the recognition and treatment of high-cost users of health care, the incidence of healthcare utilization remains high. Rates of hospital admissions and emergency room visits among chronic disease like COPD have become a targeted group for health management. COPD patients have multiple and complex health and social needs, but the impact of their unmet food needs is not well understood and warrants further investigation. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationships between COPD food insecure patients and healthcare utilization in San Diego County. A descriptive correlational design using retrospective data was used. Data were abstracted from the electronic health records of patients receiving services for COPD. The purposive sample included patients 40 years or older with an ICD 10 code AECOPD upon discharge from the emergency room or their hospital admission. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were used to describe patient characteristics and examine relationships among multiple independent variables and two dependent variables. This study contributes to the growing body of research supporting the association of upstream social factors and how existing programs can be utilized effectively to have downstream health outcomes such as healthcare utilization.
Study on Pill Color and Shape in Promoting Functional Recognition and Efficacy Association for Chronic Illness Medication View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hui Chun Hsiao
It was estimated that the population of 65 and above in Taiwan accounted for 14.05% of the total population in 2018, resulting in Taiwan becoming an Aged Society. Factors such as an aging population, changes in the living environment, work-related stress, and unhealthy lifestyle habits have indirectly contributed to the prevalence of chronic illnesses. One of the important tasks for chronic illness patients is to regularly take medication as instructed by physicians, aside from attending regular clinical follow-up sessions. However, it has been estimated that over 50% of chronic illness patients take at least 4 to 6 types of medications daily, which come in different sizes and sometimes colored similarly, making it difficult for patients to recognize and manage the medication properly. In this study, we explored the association between “pill shapes”, “functional pill colors” and “efficacy pill colors” of the five common types of chronic illness medication pills used by the Taiwanese population. We then investigated the possibility of designing an easily recognized, informative, and placebo-enhancing appearance of chronic illness medication pill. This study's subjects were classified into three age intervals and were given a questionnaire survey to complete. 40 subjects were recruited from each age interval; a total of 120 effective questionnaires were collected. Our results show that subjects have different associations of pill shapes and colors to different diseases. The influencing factors could involve age interval, color association to human body function and health promotion, color association to organ health promotion, and color association to health concepts.
Strategies of Promoting Tiered Healthcare System Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process and Stakeholder Analysis: The Case of Taiwan View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Wei Wei Hsia, Leelien Huang
ZOOM LINK: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/5406896702?pwd=OWZpMngrMlRmRVg0WmcrT05KT2dtUT09 Taiwan’s National Health Insurance has been implemented since 1995 as a compulsory welfare policy. It was designed as a tiered medical services: clinics in each community provide L1 medical care, medium-sized hospitals provide L2 medical care and the large hospitals provide L3 medical care. However, the tiered medical system has never been implemented successfully. Even minor illnesses are concentrated in large hospitals for medical treatment, causing medical waste, harming the interests of critically ill patients, and poor medical quality. After many failures, in 2017 the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced the "6 Strategies and 24 Measures to Promote the Tiered Healthcare System", but the results were still very limited. Then, in the case of serious conflicts of interest among stakeholders, how can these strategies been promoted effectively? The purpose of this research is to use both the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method and the stakeholder theory to set the priority order and complementary plans for the 24 measures. This study is aimed to resolve the problem and give a holistic view on the 24 measures by using the AHP hierarchy analysis and the Mendelow's Matrix method. In the end, the study identified the key factor that has failed the previous promotion of tiered medical care is the lack of key players in the game. Therefore, it is proposed to "strengthen the interests of the Ministry of Health and Welfare to really implement tired medical care", and to "subsidize the employed doctors, large hospitals and medium-sized hospitals”.
