Elderly Health Care: Examining Its Impact on Life Satisfaction - Essay Sample

Introduction

This paper will examine how various technologies, such as having an excellent health care service, changed the older adult population number in this generation and the impact that it had on their life satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to understand the health status of an older adult in comparison to their younger selves and the challenges they face in everyday life. My interviewee was happy that she was able to get better because of the exceptional health care service she got from the hospital when she got hypertension, and her ribs were fractured.

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This planned process was done through an excellent interview with the patient, which went smoothly. She is a loving mother and had a friendly approach during this entire presentation. The paper will be organized according to the content where a detailed interview will follow the introduction. After the interview, the paper will focus on the diagnosis of the patient, the nurse's intervention, and, finally, the lessons learned from this interview.

Demographic Information

The patient is a 73 years old, African American female. She was born in Ethiopian and lived most of her life there. She came to the United States when she was around 50 years old. Her education status is high school but not graduated. She never worked for any company and got retired. She is financially dependent on her children since her husband passed away ten years ago, and she is currently living with one of her daughters. However, all of her children supported her financially and physically. Except for the fact that she misses her husband being with her, she is comfortable with her life. She goes church every Sunday and sometimes twice a week, where she was an active participant in the prayer group. After her vision declined, however, she stopped driving by herself, and she cannot go to church as she used to. Regardless, she is still attentive in church when she manages to get someone to drive her there.

Health

She has had some illness in the past years, where she fell three times and got severe injuries. She mentioned that her first fall occurred when she was about to get up from the bed to help her granddaughter. The second and third time was when she tried to go down the stairs. She has hypertension and high-risk of falling. She got two broken ribs on her left side as a result of these falls. She took regular blood pressure pills to prevent any complication that comes with hypertension, and she also tries to eat healthily. Her daughter helped her through this process. She took some multivitamins from over the counter (Centrum older women multivitamin). She sees her doctor every three months for her hypertension and rib fracture. When I asked her how she compares her life with other older adults, she said that she likes the way she is living. She feels healthy and robust in spite of her hypertension condition and fractured ribs. Her health is boosted by having her children support her in every activity she does. Even so, she does most of her daily activities by herself, such as taking a bath, eating, getting dressed, cooking, and moving from one place to another. She also does some exercise around the neighborhood, for instance, taking evening walks. She used an assistive device when she was in the hospital and some months after that until she recovered from her surgery. Other than that, she never uses any assistive device.

Self-Concept

I asked her how she describes herself. She said that she considered herself the luckiest and the most blessed woman on the planet because she has eight children and fourteen grandchildren, all of whom are still alive. They all live in the United States, and some of them are just live a mile away but in the same neighborhood. They always watch her and help her with everything she needs. She is an ardent believer and said that God had done everything according to His will and that her husband was up in heaven with Him. She describes the most important part of her life as being her marriage and the birth of her children. In accordance with her culture, she got married when she was 17 and had her first child at the age of 18. She was very happy with her marriage until her husband died of a heart attack. She has led a pleasant life, and her most treasured memory was of the day that she got pregnant.

She states that both her husband and she were pleased by having the children in their lives. The sudden event that had a significant impact on her life was the unexpected loss of her husband. She told me that he had gone home for vacation and to visit some of his siblings. However, one night they called her and told her that her husband had been hospitalized because of a heart attack, and the doctors could not save him. It was an unexpected shock for her, and she had the following to say about the incident, "I thought I would not be able to live again." Every year, she gets sick when the day that her husband passed away approaches.

Social Support and Home Environments

As I mentioned earlier, all of her children are living. Although she does not have any blood brothers and sisters in the United States, she said that she has a lot of them back home in Ethiopia. She also told me that she considers herself blessed with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. She said that she has never felt alone and depressed because she can always talk to her many Christian brothers and sisters when she feels worried. She, however, repeated that her children were around her most of the time, and she feels very blessed because of them. She relies on her children most of the time because she cannot do tasks such as driving on her own due to her doctor's recommendation. As she lives with her daughter, they do most tasks together, including shopping, going to the doctor's appointments, and getting prescription drugs.

Interpersonal Life Satisfaction

She stated that she does everything that she is supposed to do at home and that she likes cooking. She spends most of her time cooking and helping out her grandchildren. She loves gardening, but she only does it during the summertime. She likes attending bible study groups and prayers meetings. Her favorite time is when her family members come together to have dinner. She gets to meet her children most of the time, as every one of them comes to see her. This is easy because most of them live in the same neighborhood, and even though they may not have time to sit and chat, she said that they always stop to say hi.

When I asked her what she enjoys at this time, she said that she is getting rest and feeling blessed. She said even though she was happy having those all children when she was young, it was hard for her to raise them. She said that her husband was a strong man and who was very supportive of the entire family. She had a housemaid who used to help her as well as a family member. She told me that although she had had many ups and downs in her life, she did not want to complain. She rated her life 9/10 and said to me that her goal and plan is helping her children and grandchildren in whatever way that she can.

Reflection

My main concern when approaching this interview was how to identify a 70-year-old adult and how I would interview her/him? Even though I know some older adults, I do not have that much interaction with them. When I finally selected my patient, I was afraid of interviewing her for the first few minutes. Still, she made me very comfortable by asking a personal question about why I want to be a nurse and how I was able to manage it.

The most comfortable area of the interview was when we talked about her early marriage, having children, and how the process of raising her kids was complicated. She expressed how joyous she felt about the outcome of this process. I was least comfortable when she talked about her husband. This was because she got very emotional, gazing into the distance, and crying while remembering her departed husband. I ended up becoming very emotional as well, and I even cried with her. Because I did not want to make her uncomfortable by reminding her of her grief, we had a small quiet break before continuing with the conversation.

Diagnosis

Based on the interview I conducted, I came up with two diagnoses for the patient which are;

1. Risk of fall

This is related to unstable orthostatic hypertension, as evidenced by the patient's response of feeling dizzy whenever she stands and losing her balance. This could be as a result of age-related muscular degeneration, which affects the patient's ability to see correctly, and she might end up falling frequently. "Age related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of irreversible visual loss in developed countries. It is associated with vascular risk factors, including hypertension." (Bhuachalla et al., p. 4)

2. Risk of Unstable blood pressure

The patient is prone to developing an unstable blood pressure rate which is related to inconsistency with her medication regimen, as evidenced by the patient started feeling dizziness, blurred vision, and shortness of breath after taking the blood pressure medication. Here, the patient may be affected by non-adherence to her treatment regimen, which could cause the effects of her hypertension to intensify, leading to an unstable blood pressure rate. (Jullien, Laurent & Azizi, 2018)

Nursing Intervention

1. Risk of fall

My patient has hypertension, which affects her coordination and movement, putting her at an elevated risk of falling. One of the interventions that I put forward to help curb this risk was to advise the patient against taking alcohol or smoking, which could heighten the risk of dizziness, leading to her falling more often. This, she assured me, was of no concern as she was a devout Christian, and she did not engage in this. I also spoke to her grandchild, whom she lives with, to ensure that when her other children came to visit, they would not smoke near her or in her presence. "Smoking has been found to cause increased heart rates due to vasoconstrictions of the veins" (Hassan, 2019, p. 318), and this increases the risks of heart attacks

The other intervention proposed to help deal with this is encouraging the patient to get enough rest and not engage in strenuous activities that could affect her cognitions as well as her vision and coordination

2. Unstable blood pressure

The most critical issue in the patient managing hypertension is the fact that she needed to take her medication as directed by the doctor and during the specified intervals. A change in her medication has led to complications such as unstable blood pressure and cognitive deficiencies due to hypertension (Jullien, Laurent & Azizi, 2018). A strategic way that this is achieved is by involving her granddaughter, who lives with her in assisting her in taking her medication on time.

The second intervention concerning high blood pressure that I found necessary was to encourage the patient to maintain a good and healthy diet that did not put her at risk of increasing her blood pressure further. Foods that contain high cholesterol levels have been found to lead to clogging of the blood vessels, which will increase the blood pressure (Pal & Nanda, 2019) and the risk of getting a stroke. I recommended that during the shopping trips, the granddaughter should help with picking groceries and other healthy non-fatty foods, which do not pose a risk to the patient's high blood pressure.

Influence on Future Nursing Practices

In my future nursing career, I will use specific practice and some preventive methods to avoid the risk of falls, such as making the environment as comfortable as possible for older adults. I will also involve the family of the older patients more during the wh...