The process of interviewing the older adult should be undertaken carefully. The older and aging adult groups should be critically assessed, in order to come up with the necessary materials to support them. They are an important facet of interest in our population. Aging and aged adults’ life is critical and therefore it requires proper monitoring and evaluation. Various basic support initiatives should be launched in order to cater for the needs of the aged adults. Contributions towards the aged adult services can take the forms of; monetary stipend, health checkups, nutritional and dietetics aid, psychological counselling among other forms. Therefore, the future of this societal groups rests in the hands of the stakeholder agencies (Muehlbauer, T., Granacher, U., Borde, R., & Hortobágy). Some of the organizations which facilitate some support for the aged population include; the government and its department’s agencies, non-governmental organizations, compassionate movements, religious groups, adult education agencies. Society should make sure that the welfare of the aged is upgraded.
The process of enhancing welfare of the aged and the aging adults should be streamlined by the aforementioned agencies. All this efforts should be geared towards achieving a higher standard of welfare. The gross welfare of a nation depends on the welfare of its people. Therefore, a nation which embarks on upgrading the welfare of its people consequently gains by achieving a higher level of economic development. This is because, economic development is a multidimensional discipline. It encompasses: gross domestic product, per capita income, education, health, religion, culture, economic growth, and societal welfare. This is just to mention but a few. This paper aims to discuss the events that transpired during an encounter with an elderly couple. The events were demarcated into two portions; that is, both an interview and a teaching session. This paper will discuss the interview session. It will come up with the elder couple’s view of aging, health concerns and wellbeing. On the other hand, the paper will also analyze the teaching session. It will examine the various topics taught which include; safety and health services to the elderly.
The interview process found that the elderly face life experience of varied nature. I interviewed the couple on the experience deserving help and aged care in their daily encounters. The need for care, as far as the elderly are concerned was portrayed as a balance between relief and sorrow. The study findings indicate that, the elderly face a lot caveats in their struggle to accommodate control and maintain connectedness (Muehlbauer, T., Granacher, U., Borde, R., & Hortobágy). Furthermore, other experiences encompass the struggle to manage current events in their environment, as well as their anticipation and anxiety concerning their future life. In addition, the interviewed discovers that, the elderly are confronted by the challenge of coping up with the immediate environment or live events. Analysis of the interview reflects the fact that the elderly face difficulties in their bid to hide vulnerability in order to be accommodated by the changing environment. They attempt to maintain inner calm in an exposed event. Therefore, the majority of experiences were found to revolve around the basic settings of the environment. On assumption to this, the interaction of the elderly with people and situations should be a matter of great concern. From this point of view, we can easily formulate the necessary policies to counter the negative impact brought about by the experiences. The elderly view aging as a blessing. This is because it comes with challenges which teach those lessons and also presents them opportunities which they can grab. They support improved health standards and nutrition initiatives solely for improving their wellbeing.
In order to gain a deeper understanding of the interview process, this study utilized the Van Mane’s Phenomenological approach to analyze the responses given. Therefore, this therapeutic technique was found to be appropriate for the interview. Therefore, valuable information about the elderly experiences was extracted from the interview session. The interview used therapeutic communication techniques such silence and use of broad openings. Silence was employed in order to enable thee elderly couple to digest all the information concerning their life experiences (Muehlbauer, T., Granacher, U., Borde, R., & Hortobágyi). This technique added value to the study, and as a result, I captured insights concerning the area of enquiry. Furthermore, silence enhanced the setting of the interview. It gave the elderly enough space and time to broach new topics overarching from the main topic. It was administered to both the elderly so that to obtain clearly information that I expected to gather in order to see ways o to improve the situation. To the extremes, more information concerning health, safety, nutrition and wellbeing was collected from the interview. Therapeutic communication generates enough information when the respondent is given opportunity to direct the flow of interview. Therefore, the interview process used broad opening technique (Cather, J., Cather, J. C., & Young, M). The respondents gained a chance to communicate what they decided concerning the topic of the interview. They tried to answer my questions both orally and written of the answer sheet for the questions that they were asked. I instructed them to answer directly to the points that I expected to them to answer. More insights were developed from this technique. Broad opening is used to ignite respondents to communicate what is in their mind. Therefore, the interview highly accredited its utilization. It is a predominant method of collecting data. Mostly, it is applied by the researcher in order to avoid potential and actual sources of bias. The interview was faced by semantic barrier. Next time I will avoid use of more subtopics and be general. The interview brought positive change because the findings were employed by the concerned agencies.
TEACHING TOPIC: HEALTH STATUS AND WELLBEING
The teaching topic was collaboratively chosen. Various techniques and principles of teaching were used. This include drilling and practice, as well as cognitive domain technique. Drilling and practice was used in a bid to make the elderly commemorate basic health and wellbeing concepts. Various adult learning principles such as motivation and preparedness to learn initiatives were employed. This was meant to give the respondents the encouragement to cope with the situation or the environment, they were motivated public awareness initiatives which enlightened them the entire structure and content of the lesson. (Cather, J., Cather, J. C., & Young, M) The teaching session had an objective to brief the elderly about the benefits of health and wellbeing services. It also intended to create awareness on the agencies which facilitate support for the elderly needs. Writing was used to evaluate the cognitive aspect of teaching. It tested whether they remembered what was taught. The practice aspect of teaching was used to test whether they had mentally digested the taught concepts. This ensured the two learning needs were adhered to. Aging elders are important part of our society. We should provide support in their endeavors. They will feel as important and valued part of society.
This paper aimed at assessing the various life experiences of the aging elderly and to provide a brief summary of health and wellbeing concerns for them. From the elderly perspective, the interview and teaching added to the list of their best and enlightening life experiences. According to me, the entire project positively impacted the aging elderly group.
References
Muehlbauer, T., Granacher, U., Borde, R., & Hortobágyi, T. (2018). Non-Discriminant Relationships between Leg Muscle Strength, Mass and Gait Performance in Healthy Young and Old Adults. Gerontology, 64(1), 11-18.
Cather, J., Cather, J. C., & Young, M. (2018). Quality of Life in the Dermatology Practice. In Biologic and Systemic Agents in Dermatology (pp. 51-55). Springer, Cham.
