Older Person Care

• Older persons should benefit from family and community based care and protection in accordance with each society’s system of cultural values.
• Older persons should have access to health care to help them to maintain or regain the optimum level of physical, mental, and emotional well-being and to prevent or delay the onset of illness.
• Older persons should have access to social and legal services to enhance their autonomy, protection, and care.
• Older persons should be able to utilize appropriate levels of institutional care providing protection, rehabilitation, and social and mental stimulation in a humane and secure environment.
• Older persons should be able to enjoy human rights and fundamental freedoms when residing in any shelter, care, or treatment facility, including full respect for their dignity, beliefs, needs, and privacy, and for the right to make decisions about their care and the quality of their lives.

Older Person Independence

• Older persons should have access to adequate food, water, shelter, clothing, and health care through the provision of income, family and community support, and self-help.
• Older persons should have the opportunity to work or to have access to other income-generating opportunities.
• Older persons should be able to participate in determining when and at what pace aging work withdrawal from the labor force takes place. (more…)

As mentioned earlier, the tendency to reminisce as we grow older was regarded by many gerontologists as a pathology until Robert Butler showed it could be a highly positive way of integrating experiences and coming to terms with the past. As such, life review became a method for group therapy, creative writing groups, and as a source for living history drama. Some researchers went even further. They described elements of wisdom and aging creativity in the life review process. Not only were older adults of learning and expressing themselves, but because of their treasure house of past experience, they could also be ideal students and could make excellent teachers. (more…)

Swedish sociologist Lars Tornstam proposed a theory of gerotranscendence, the notion that with age comes a radically different life outlook reflecting a cosmological shift in perception. Tornstam argued that when activity aging theory eclipsed disengagement theory something of vital importance was lost. Disengagement theorists highlighted an inward reflective tendency emerging in later life that denoted a change in how older people saw the world and their places within it. The problem, said Tornstam, was that these older individuals had limited resources for cultivating the new perspective that was emerging in their lives. (more…)

There are differences on what exactly contribute to quality of life on a personal level from person to person. Although many older people in good health condition have the increase of physical problems that affect them and their businesses. Although these disorders are more common with age, including Alzheimer, dementia, arthritis, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, depression, kidneys problem; lung disease, cancer and men’s prostate disease. (more…)

Hospice care became a recognized benefit under Medicare in 1983, and approximately 90% of all hospice programs are Medicare certified. As 28% of all Medicare costs go to persons in their last year of life, and 50% of such costs are expended during the last 2 months of life, (more…)

No matter where you live and in what circumstances, it’s evident that ours is a planet that has been damaged over centuries of human growth and scientific progress. The earth’s resources are limited. For that reason alone, it’s important to protect and preserve what we have from our land to our air to our water supplies. It’s especially important when you consider that surplus of twelve million new lives each year. (more…)

At a certain point, one’s perceptions of aging become inter- twined with perceptions of oneself. In the experience of aging, my credentials get better every day! As a pastoral theologian, I live in a creative tension between the established dogma and practice of my personal faith on the one hand, and the more generic, encompassing spiritual dimension that is presented here without any primary or specific religious connotation on the other hand. (more…)

Hospice is a philosophy of caring for dying patients and their families while emphasizing quality of life. Care is provided by an interdisciplinary team to meet the patient’s and family’s needs throughout the dying process as well as after death. Bereavement care is a key component of hospice, setting it apart from other forms of institutional care provided to dying persons. (more…)