PERSPECTIVE IN AGING
Prepared By:
ARNELLE L. BALINAO, MAN
INSTRUCTOR
PERSPECTIVE
OF AGING
•No matter where a nurse practices her profession,
there will always be a time in her career where she
needs to care for older adults.
GERONTOLOGY
• Broad term used to define the study of aging and /
or the Aged.
• This includes biopsychosocial aspects of aging:
UNDER THE UMBRELLA OF GERONTOLOGY ARE SEVERAL
SUBFIELDS.
a.Geriatrics
b.Social gerontology
c. Geropsychology
d.Geropharmacology
e. Financial gerontology
f. Gerontology Nursing
g. Gerontological
Rehabilitation
•Geriatric or gerontological nursing is one of the
fields of nursing that deals with proper care
and hospitalization of aged or geriatric
patients.
•This specialized field is very intricate as it involves
understanding the aging process and the
tremendous changes that every individual has to
face.
•Life expectancy is steadily increasing. Thus, nurses
are expected to care for a relatively large
number of the elderly in the coming decades.
DEFINITION OF TERMS:
• Aging: The process of becoming older, a process that is
genetically determined and environmentally modulated.
• Ageism: a bias against older people based solely on their
chronologic age, without consideration of their functional
status
FORMAL DEFINITION
:
"any attitude, action, or institutional structure which
subordinates a person or group because of age or
any assignment of roles in society purely on the
basis of age"
INFORMAL DEFINITION
• Stereotypic and often negative perception of older
adults
• - often a mistaken idea or belief of many people about
older adults. Negative perception.
• Type of prejudice
• They maybe looking on the outside which is actually
untrue or partly true.
GERONTOLOGIC/GERIATRIC NURSING:
•the field of nursing that specializes in the nursing
process as it relates to the assessment, nursing
diagnosis, planning, implementation, and
evaluation of older adults in all environments
including acute, intermediate, and skilled care as
well as within the community
GERIATRICS:
•the study of old age that includes the physiology,
pathology, diagnosis, and management of the
disorders and diseases of older adults
GERONTOLOGY:
•the combined biologic, psychologic, and sociologic
study of older adults within their environment
•-the scientific study of old age, the process of
aging, and the particular problems of old people.
TYPES OF AGING:
• Chronologic aging – reckoned by the number of
years lived since birth
• Physical aging – growing old physically as a result of
the passage of time; examples: graying of hair,
poorer eyesight requiring the use of eyeglasses,
lapses in ability to recall names and faces.
• Functional aging – This reflects our ability to carry out
an independent, self-sufficient life in which we take
care of our own personal needs like self-care.
• Growing older, or chronological aging, is a relentless and
unstoppable process that happens to all humans. For that
reason alone, some bioethicists argue that aging is, in fact, a
natural developmental process for human beings
(Meilaender, 2011). ... It is senescence that causes diseases
of aging. (deterioration with age.
• loss of a cell's power of division and growth.)
• ****