AGED CARE NURSING

AGED CARE NURSING

 

1. Wellness – How do you distinguish between health & wellness?

            In the past, most individuals and societies viewed good health, or wellness, as the opposite or absence of disease. This simple attitude ignores states of health between disease and good health. Health is multidimensional concept and should be viewed from a much broader perspective (2004).

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Many other aspects of health also need to be considered. Health is a state of being that people define in relation to their own values, personality, and lifestyle (2004). How health is viewed can actually vary among different individuals depending on age-groups, gender, race, and culture.

            Wellness is actually just a part of a bigger thing which is health. It is a healthy state of well-being free from disease. Wellness is generally used to mean a healthy balance of the mind-body and spirit that results in an overall feeling of well-being.

Wellness is just a state of good health whereas health can include conditions previously considered to be illness ( 2004). An example is a person with epilepsy who has learned to control seizures with medication and who functions at home and at work. This person may no longer consider himself or herself to be ill but he or she cannot also be considered to be well. The person is just in a state of health.

            Health and wellness are not merely the absence of disease or illness. A person’s state of health, wellness, or illness depends on individual values, personality and lifestyle.

 

2. Demographics – Why is it important for nurses to understand demographics?

            There are many external forces that can affect aged care nursing. One of these is demographics. Demographics is defined as the characteristics of a human population or part of it, especially its size, growth, density, distribution, and statistics regarding birth, marriage, disease, and death ( 2005). If there are demographic changes, it affects the population as a whole. Changes that have influenced healthcare in recent decades include the population shift from rural areas to urban centers; the increasing life span; the higher incidence of chronic, long-term illness; and the increased incidence of diseases such as alcoholism and lung cancer (2004).

            Nursing as a profession responds to such changes by exploring new methods for providing care, by changing educational emphases, and by establishing practice standards in new areas (2004). Demographics can help determine both the supply of and the demand for health care facilities.

            Rapid changes in demographics will require different approaches to manage quality. Nurses are positioned to play a pivotal role in delivering and managing quality outcomes while advocating for patients in an environment that is increasingly complex (2002).

            Demographics include the changing population from the young one to adults to old people. At the same time that the population is aging, so are those in nursing. At the same time, nursing careers are becoming shorter. Nurses are finding opportunities for meaningful work in a variety of roles, some of which can take them far from clinical practice. Along with the demographic shift the cultural makeup of the nursing profession itself is becoming increasingly diverse and global ( 2002).

 

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