When Thinking About Aging
With healthcare in the United States advancing so rapidly, there are new ways to treat just about any kind of illness every day. With being able to treat illnesses in new ways, and also the advancement of medical equipment, comes the possibility of a lot more people living up into their 90’s, and maybe even getting to reach 100. The aging population, which keeps growing every so rapidly, will be using up a lot more sources as the years go by. This means, that we need to educate more doctors and nurses, etc., and also make more living facilities for older adults. The question that comes up in my mind, is when is “old” actually”. Most people stereotypically consider ages 75 and older old, but that doesn’t mean they are actually “old”, does it?
In my opinion I don’t think of 75 as old. In fact, I don’t think any age is “old” In fact I don’t think there should be average age limit in today’s society. So instead of age what do you use to determine if someone is old? I think that people’s health should reflect their “age” or how old they are. For example, to figure out someone’s health, you can ask question such as, are they still active, eating healthy, and are the cognitive skills still on point? Only when people start to stray from those requirements, and start to have deteriorated health, or the call themselves old, do I think that we then can say they are old. If they don’t meet that criteria however, then they are not old.
If you really think about it, society is already starting to stray away from the term “old”. Instead, people are calling 90 year olds 90 years young. Even in talk shows and just from talking to people in general, we see/ hear about 90 year olds doing yoga, running a business or do...
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... long term care and nursing homes are great places for older adults who don’t have family or who are in need of some extra care, such as rehabilitation for a broken bone or other illness. I think that they are good for a reasonable amount of time, but I don’t think people should have to die there. In some cases, yes, the older adult is very ill, has no family, or doesn’t have enough family to care for them, and needs to stay in the nursing home facility and they sometimes do die there, but that doesn’t mean they should. Unfortunately sometimes, it is the ending stop of some people’s lives and that is scary to think about because who wants to die in a hospital, or “hospital- like” setting?
So in conclusion, in this course I am looking forward to learning all about gerontology, how older adults function and how they feel when they are in those situations listed above.
As the decades have passed, the life expectancy has increased rapidly. This means people are living longer lives and becoming much older than the average life expectancy. Along with living a longer life, ageism may start to appear in older adult’s everyday routines. Ageism can be seen in many places, for instance,: the grocery store, on billboards, in doctor’s offices, on commercials, etc. This seems to be a growing complication and may even hurt the feelings of some people reaching retirement age. Although some advertisements may not seem like they are trying to show any kind of bias, but in some cases they are.
Hiller, S. M., & Barrow, G. M. (2011). Aging, the individual, and society. (9th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
There are profound effects of ageism that can be harmful to a patient’s overall health. Ageism can cause physicians to consistently treat older patients unequally compared to younger adults. Unequal treatment can be divided into the under-treatment of symptoms and the over-treatment of symptoms. The imbalance in how a physician would treat a geriatric patient is ageist because the older adult is not getting fair treatment in every case. Under-treatment and over-treatment are different; however, they are both equally as harmful to a patients health.
Ageing is not inevitably associated with failing health, but many elderly people are living with one or more long-term medical conditions and for a significant number, advancing age brings complications
The life course perspective of aging is the idea that things will not always stay the same. Globally and individually as you go through life, your goals and perspective on things will most certainly change. According to Texas A&M University Commerce instructor Dr. Dawg, “The vision of the ideal life
In his article entitled, The Centenarian, author Henry J. Aaron notes that by the middle of this century, there will be more than one-million people living in the United States who are over 100 years-of-age. In 1960, there were one-million 85 year-olds. At the beginning of the twentieth-cen...
The term “ageism” is not easily understood by most of the population because of its acceptance as normal behavior due to the ingrained attitudes that most people develop in their youth, but health care workers must fully embrace the term within their profession in order to avoid becoming a contributor to the historical prevalence of prejudices and discrimination. The term ageism is defined by Klein and Liu (2010) as “the discrimination of individuals based solely on age” (p. 334). “Ageism is a social construct that is internalized in the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of individuals” (Klein & Liu, 2010, p. 334). Robert Butler, a well-known gerontologist, coined the term “ageism” citing that the discrimination and prejudice associated with this term is often based on the lack of a person’s experience with older people (Ferrini & Ferrini, 2013, p. 6). Ferrini and Ferrini (2013) refer to the strong influence that cultural beliefs and attitudes as well as a person’s current age influence the perception of aging (p. 6). Everywhere within society there are influences that encourage ageist attitudes such as media conveyances through movies, books, television, greeting cards, magazines and the Internet (Ferrini and Ferrini, 2013, p. 6). These negative connotations related to growing older begin to influence all people at a very young age and therefore impact their attitudes as they make career decisions. This has directly impacted the number of health care providers who specialize in geriatrics as well as the attitudes of those who do provide services for older adults. These false perceptions and negative attitudes are currently impacting the q...
...th professionals, were significantly more cynical toward and distrustful of older adults” (p. 63). The findings in Meisner’s (2012) conveyed that physicians demonstrated attitudes about older patients including feelings of these individuals being “disengaged and unproductive” while assuming that these characteristics applied to all of the older patients regardless of each person’s actual abilities (p. 63). Combing all older adults into one category defined by disability and dysfunction is detrimental to the well-being of each patient. Chronological age is not the determining factor relative to treatment; functional age is a better testament to expected outcomes for a patient. It is imperative that physicians understand what is “normal aging” rather than searching for pathologies based on symptoms that are just part of this aging process. According to Meisner
The different stages of life are inevitable; one day we will find ourselves older and unable to perform simple daily tasks. One day it will be difficult to remember things we swore would never leave our minds. One day we may lose many of our loved ones and discover a new sense of loneliness. Maybe not anytime soon, but one day it may happen. It is crucial to realize that millions of people are going through this stage today; the elderly do not deserve to be overlooked.
We are as old as we think. Do I think age discrimination exist? Yes, Do I believe the elderly act like what I see on television? No. My mother is 65 years old and she is nothing like we see on television. She gardens every morning, walk everyday, dance, eat listen to the same music, and knows how to use the Internet. My mother is a grandmother to 12 grandchildren and 1 great grandchild she watches them dance and play with them each day, my mother has more energy than I
In today’s society, what was once said to be true and taken as fact regarding older people is no longer the whole story. As Laslett states, “At all times before the middle of the twentieth century and all over the globe the greater part of human life potential has been wasted, by people dying before their allotted time was up.” (1989a), and to a great extent a lot
What do you really know about the lifestyles of aging population? What do you know about aging and its effects? There are more myths about older people than they are of any other stage of people’s lives. Aging in America is a success story for public health policies and socioeconomic development, and as a society it forces us to maximize the health and functional capacity of the ageing American. A portion of Americans 65 years and over will make 13 percent of the U.S. population and is expected to rise in fewer than 25 years, which will increase, to 20 percent by the year 2050. A number of ageing Americans are living longer and staying increasingly active and for older adult’s good health ensures independence. With millions of Americans aging they struggle daily with health challenges, physical changes, psychological problems which all can impact their quality of life.
“If I can buy enough pills, cream, and hair, I can avoid becoming old” (Esposito, 1987). Western cultures are champions of stigmatizing the complex, delicate, remarkable process that is aging. Generally, people rely on physical cues to categorize each other in races, genders, and ages. What comes to mind immediately when the word “old” or “elderly” comes about? Quick identifiers like white hair, wrinkles, and slow-moving, are always associated with the elderly. Simply, the labels that are given i.e. elderly, old people, seniors, and senior citizens contribute to the categorization of this group of people. Like prejudice or discrimination, “ageism” refers to the adverse attitudes, stereotypes, and behaviors focused toward older adults based
According to DeBrew, author of “Can being ageist harm your older adult patients?” stereotypes and discrimination are evident in various aspects of patient care. “Ageism [is] defined as stereotyping or discrimination aimed at older adults and a lack of knowledge about normal changes of aging and presentation of illness in older adults (. . .)” (DeBrew, 2015). DeBrew (2015) states, “research findings suggest that ageism is common in healthcare” (DeBrew, 2015). Ageism is not only an issue in the healthcare setting, but also among older adults as well as their families. When ageism is present in the healthcare setting it poses
A term used for elders is aged, which is having reached a specific age (McKenzie & Pinger, 2015, p.273). Another term used for elders is aging, which means getting older. Some elders live in assisted-living facilities, which provides an alternative to long-term care in a nursing hoe. They also can live in retirement communities, which are areas that have been specifically developed for those in their retirement years (McKenzie & Pinger, 2015, p.288). For elders, health care is a major issue for them. Since they are older, they develop more health problems and that causes them to use the health care system