With age, people tend to lose their ability to function properly due to physical disability. The nurses in the care help the elderly people to complete the daily activities due to the functional disabilities that set in with age. Therefore, the nurses in the care settings use various methods to help the elderly people maintain their functional status in terms of preventing falls, malnutrition, poor self-care and skin integrity.
This report emphasizes on the methods or activities undertaken by the nurses in aged care rehabilitation to help elderly people to maintain their functional status. Peer-reviewed journals are used for critically analysing and observing the methods used by the nurses in for the elderly people in the rehabilitation centre thereby, keeping them functional.
As mentioned by (Gillespie, et al., 2012), one of the most important interventions used by the nurses for helping the elderly people in maintaining the physical activity is helping them doing physical activities by motivating them. As seen the rate of physical activities in the elderly people decreasing, as they tend to move frequently. As a result, the bones and muscles of the elderly people tend to function slowly thereby, making them mostly dependent on others. With time, the elderly people also lose confidence to work independently. Therefore, the nurses in the rehabilitation centre help the elderly people in motivating the elderly people to continue the physical activities. As a result, the elderly people are able to maintain physical mobility thereby, helping them live independently. However, as argued by (Reid & Fielding, 2012), increasing the skeletal muscle power of the elderly people helps in effective maintenance of the physical activity. With age, due to lack of calcium and drying of the cartilages, muscle movement of the elderly people gets extremely difficult. Skeletal movement for the elderly people is very painful that prohibits them from maintaining effective physical movement. Therefore, the nurses at the rehabilitation centres ensure that the elderly people are continuing physical activities to maintain physical activities. The physiotherapists conduct physiotherapy sessions with the elderly patients to help them maintain comfortable physical activities. Physiotherapy sessions for the elderly patients help them in smooth and comfortable physical movement thereby, allowing them to maintain the physical activities smoothly. The physiotherapy sessions conducted by the physiotherapist in presence of the nurses that helps in improving strength for the elderly people along with enduring correct postural and muscular balance.
According to (Cadore, Rodríguez-Mañas, Sinclair, & Izquierdo, 2013), the nurses in the care settings use exercise programs such as resistance training, endurance training, and balance training and multi-component programs help in maintaining physical mobility for elderly people. Balance training is an intervention that nurses teach the elderly people aiming at preventing falls. The exercises of the balance training include heel-toe walking, stepping practice and throwing or catching a ball. All the aforementioned activities help in ensuring skeletal and muscular movement for the elderly patients thereby, maintaining physical mobility. However, on the contrary, the nurses for improving the overall health status of the elderly people consider multi-component exercise programs the most effective. The nurses use different types of stimulus in order to improve the balance of the elderly people. Therefore, the nurses promote independence to the elderly people and ability to perform daily activities. However, as argued by (Windle & Bennett, 2012), the nurses in the clinical settings helps in preventing poor self-care for the in the context of care giving, by psychologically motivating the elderly people helps in building confidence thereby, enabling physical movement. The motivation provided by the nurses helps the elderly people in gaining confidence and taking good care of them individually. This helps the elderly people maintain physical health and move muscles and skeletal comfortably. Psychological motivation provided by the nurses helps in encouraging the elderly people in taking appropriate good care of them thereby, preventing issues such as malnutrition, falls and skin integrity. However, on the contrary, this leaves chances of falling and injury for the elderly patients, as they lack physical support.
According to the article written by (Gillespie, et al., 2012), it can be concluded that more than 70% of the elderly people have been benefitted by practicing the physical activities daily. The training provided by the nurses at the rehabilitation centre makes the movement of muscle and skeletons smooth. With age, as the liquid between the skeletons gets dry, the elderly people feel pain in moving normally. Therefore, physical activity enforced by the nurses helps in maintaining regulatory movement of the muscles for the elderly people. However, as argued by (Robinovitch, et al., 2013), the physical activities enforced by the nurses for the elderly people making it hectic for them. This is because due to old age, the elderly people require inputting more energy in completing the physical activities thereby, making it tiring. At certain instances, the physical activities conducted by the nurses have a detrimental impact on the elderly people. According to the findings of (Reid & Fielding, 2012), it can be concluded that the nurses help in increasing the skeletal muscle power of the elderly people by using isokinetic or isometric dynamometry. It has been seen that more than 60% of the elderly people have been able to maintain functional status due to the implementation of isometric dynamometry. However, as argued by (Trampisch, Franke, Jedamzik, Hinrichs, & Platen, 2012), implementation of isometric dynamometry for muscle strengthening for the elderly people prevents the flow of blood to the muscles. As a result, the speed of muscle response in decreased largely. Additionally, the elderly people have also complained to the nurses of being easily bored, as they have to continuously press against the same object for a long time. As mentioned by (Harbo, Brincks, & Andersen, 2012), isometric dynamometry might also increase the flow of blood suddenly thereby, leading to an irregular heartbeat or ruptured blood vessels for the elderly people. Therefore, the nurses in the rehabilitation centre need to conduct isometric dynamometry for muscle strengthening appropriately.
According to the article written by (Cadore, Rodríguez-Mañas, Sinclair, & Izquierdo, 2013), it can be concluded that balancing training, multi-component exercise programs and resistance training helps in maintaining the functional status for the elderly people. It can be said more than 50% of the elderly people have been able to maintain proper balance due to attending balancing training conducted by the nurses. The training has provided the opportunity of maintaining proper balance in the old age and perform physical activities independently. Additionally, endurance training also helps in enhancing in cardiovascular functions within the elderly people. However, as argued by (Furuta, et al., 2013), increased cardiovascular functions has an adverse impact on the elderly people, as they have a weak heart due to old age. Therefore, the nurses in the rehabilitation centre need to be extremely careful while providing training to the elderly people in order to maintain functional state. According to the article written by (Windle & Bennett, 2012), it can be concluded that psychological motivation provided by the nurses helps in encouraging the elderly people to maintain functional state. Continuous motivation provided by the nurses helps the elderly people in performing the physical trainings and perform their daily activities independently. However, as argued by (Zimmermann, et al., 2014), only care provided by the nurses makes the elderly people more incompetent as they tend to rely largely on the support of the nurses rather than having confidence in them.
Conclusion
In this report, it can be concluded that the nurses in the rehabilitation centre play a significant role in maintaining functional status for the elderly people. The nurses conduct various physical exercises, training such as balancing training, endurance training for ensuring that the elderly people remain in the functional state. Additionally, the nurses in the rehabilitation centre helps in psychologically motivating the elderly people in taking good self-care. Ensuring good self-care for the elderly people will prevent malnutrition, skin integrity along with preventing falls. As a result, the elderly people in the rehabilitation centre are able to live a physically sound life due to the support of the nurses.
References
Cadore, Rodríguez-Mañas, Sinclair, & Izquierdo, &. (2013). Effects of different exercise interventions on risk of falls, gait ability, and balance in physically frail older adults: a systematic review. Rejuvenation research, 105-114.
Furuta, Komiya?Nonaka, Akifusa, Shimazaki, Adachi, Kinoshita, & Yamashita, &. (2013). Interrelationship of oral health status, swallowing function, nutritional status, and cognitive ability with activities of daily living in Japanese elderly people receiving home care services due to physical disabilities. Community dentistry and oral epidemiology, 173-181.
Gillespie, Robertson, Gillespie, Sherrington, Gates, Clemson, & Lamb, &. (2012). Interventions for preventing falls in older people living in the community. The Cochrane Library.
Harbo, Brincks, & Andersen, &. (2012). Maximal isokinetic and isometric muscle strength of major muscle groups related to age, body mass, height, and sex in 178 healthy subjects. European journal of applied physiology, 267-275.
Reid, & Fielding, &. (2012). Skeletal muscle power: a critical determinant of physical functioning in older adults. Exercise and sport sciences reviews, 4.
Robinovitch, Feldman, Yang, Schonnop, Leung, Sarraf, & Loughin, &. (2013). Video capture of the circumstances of falls in elderly people residing in long-term care: an observational study. The Lancet, 47-54.
Trampisch, Franke, Jedamzik, Hinrichs, & Platen, &. (2012). Optimal Jamar dynamometer handle position to assess maximal isometric hand grip strength in epidemiological studies. The Journal of hand surgery, 2368-2373.
Windle, & Bennett, &. (2012). Caring relationships: How to promote resilience in challenging times. In The social ecology of resilience . New York: Springer.
Zimmermann, Swami, Krzyzanowska, Hannon, Leighl, Oza, & Donner, &. (2014). Early palliative care for patients with advanced cancer: a cluster-randomised controlled trial. The Lancet, 1721-1730.
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