Plenary 1: The Hospital – A Staff Empowering ... - HPH-Conference

Parallel Sessions
Parallel Sessions 1: Thursday, April 12, 2007, 11.00-12.30
Session 1-1:
Health promotion for older persons
Enhancing patient empowerment opportunities
during respite care
Anne Quinn, Paula Lane
Long term care facilities for older people must be tailored to
respond effectively to patient empowerment processes. Such
strategies offer health promotional opportunities for older
people as well as their carers, thereby enhancing health and
social outcomes.
This study explored the in-hospital respite care needs of older
people and their family carers, as identified by nurses. The
study explored how in-hospital respite care contributed to
benefit or lack of benefit, depending on whether or not health
promotional opportunities during respite care were captured. It
is imperative to service quality that key issues important to
patients and carers are reflected in client-centred respite care
services.
Findings from the study reveal a ‘functional’ approach to providing
respite care as opposed to actively seeking ways to expand
or develop the service in a proactive way. Respite was
viewed more positively where it moved beyond providing
functional care to providing some identifiable benefit for the
care recipient. A recommendation of the study is that rather
than providing respite care solely in response to family stress
or crises, the educational and health promotional potential of
respite care should be harnessed.
This requires conceptualisation of respite care from that of a
reactive service to a proactive service providing the necessary
supports and resources to adapt care-giving practices that
more effectively meet the needs of older people and their
carers. Enhancing the supportiveness of the health care system
for care recipients can delay institutionalisation while
promoting increased and sustainable health and social gain.
Including patients and carers in the identification of their needs
leads to patient and carer empowerment and increased levels
of control in their lives. In an era where the older population is
steadily rising and healthcare costs are increasing, the opportunities
that respite care provides for implementing health
promotional activities must be exploited.
Connex to HPH
Identification of need for respite care services to move beyond
provision of 'functional' care to giving patients and carers an
opportunity to benefit from provision of information, education,
health maintenance and health promotional activities. Anne
Quinn (Joint-author) is currently undertaking site preparation for
an advanced nursing role in dementia care, in a 135 bed care
of the older person hospital. Part of this preparation will involve
exploring and developing ways in which patients and carers are
empowered and their quality of life improved by enhancing the
supportiveness of health systems.
Contact
Dr. Paula LANE
Lecturer, Department of Nursing
Waterford Institute Technology
Cork Road
Waterford
IRELAND
+353 513 020 00
plane@wit.ie
Routine assessment of geriatric patients
for risk of or actual malnutrition
Ulrike Sommeregger, Thomas Frühwald
Contrary to the situation of the general population in the Western
world, malnutrition is a common problem among geriatric
patients, leading to a serious deterioration of their health
status: A direct negative influence has been established on
muscle and bone mass (which again is contributing to falls and
fractures), on the immune system and on cognitive function.
Malnutrition is also known to have negative impact on complication
rates, length of hospital stay and on functional independence
of geriatric patients. Avoiding or reducing such a
development is the most important task of geriatric departments.
Therefore, assessing the risk of malnutrition and the actual
nutritional status is a definite part of our core diagnostic procedure
– the comprehensive geriatric assessment.
Every new patient is screened by using the Mini Nutritional
Assessment Pretest, and any patient below the cut-off of 11
points is visited by our nutritionist. A thorough history of the
patient’s nutritional habits is taken, followed by counselling,
including a written handout containing the individual "prescription".
Our presentation will show assessment data, an analysis of
monitoring our patients’ nutritional intake, data from our participation
in two big multicenter studies and our next step to
meet the challenge of open questions which still remain.
Connex to HPH
Malnutrition in geriatric patients is a frequent risk factor for
deterioration of health and functional decline. Therefore, routine
screening and consecutive nutritional intervention is indicated.
Contact
Dr. Ulrike SOMMEREGGER
KH Hietzing m. Neurolog. Zentrum Rosenhügel
Wolkersbergenstr.1
1130 Vienna
AUSTRIA
+43 1 801 103 342
ulli-sommeregger@aon.at
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