Nursing Care of Elderly: Roles, Challenges, and Future Implications

This paper reviews the nursing care of elderly, emphasizing on nurses’ roles, challenges, and future implications. It also highlights the relevance of nursing care of elderly for the future nursing role.

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NURSING CARE OF ELDERLY
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Nursing Care of Elderly
Nurses have been entrusted with a critical role in the promotion of public health.
Throughout history, nurses have primarily been focused on the prevention of diseases and
fostering healthy behaviors among their patient populations. However, given their vast
experience and multi-disciplinary knowledge, a rather more complexity in their roles has been
presented in their scope of nursing practice (Gholizadeh & Nayeri, 2013). With special emphasis
on the provision of care for the older adults, this paper aims to review the nursing care of elderly
and how nurses’ roles are increasingly changing with the diverse needs presented by this patient
population.
Overview of Nursing Care of Elderly and Relevance to the Aged Care Nursing
Aged care nursing requires that community based perspectives be enhanced in order to
promote better aging of older individuals who are either at home or in nursing homes. Nurses
should also aim to address the complex issues that are faced by the elderly population and their
families when these patient populations are transitioning from home care to acute care settings.
For instance, the nursing practice need to address the impacts of dementia or any other illness
that may impact on quality treatment related to the patient and their families (Capezuti &
Hamers, 2013, p. 1153). As such, nursing care of elderly therefore emphasize on nurses’
common concern regarding the need to ensure that the elderly population experience a
maintained quality of life and enjoy life long quantity of years. Ideally, this focus is primarily
important in addressing the aforementioned issues that are experienced by the elderly patients
and their families in different care settings.

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Additionally, nursing care of elderly strives to uphold and address the ethical concerns
that may arise when providing care to older populations. Notably, aged care nursing emphasizes
on the need to focus on ethics while caring for older patient populations and their effects on
caregivers, and patients and their families. In this light, ethical considerations such as autonomy,
informed consent and self-determination have proven to be key issues that need to be adhered to
in protection of the well-being of the patient (Suhonen, Stolt & Launis, 2010). Thus, nursing care
of elderly, is essential in ensuring that nurses in their practice do not engage in malpractices in
which they may be found to be liable when ethical considerations are taken into perspective.
Relevance of Nursing Care of Elderly for the Future Nursing Role
In comparison to other age groups as well as other patient populations, evidence indicates
that older adults are in need of disproportionately higher amounts of health care services.
Furthermore, they are more likely to experience adverse events such as fall injuries during
hospitalization and they are also more prone to health complications such as pressure ulcers. In
consideration of these factors coupled with the fact that that the number of aging individuals is
increasing, it is expected that there will be an increase in the demand of health services by this
group of individuals. To the nursing practice, this effect therefore presents a bug challenge in
their provision of high quality care (Capezuti et al, 2012, p. 3117).
Also given their different and demanding health needs, nurses are therefore needed to
provide specialized care as well as implement evidence-based practices that will ideally
contribute to a positive nursing practice environment. The nursing roles are therefore evolving at
alarming rates requiring nurses to evolve in their provision of care to the elderly. For instance, in
nursing care homes, nurses have been inclined to shift from task-oriented care to relation-

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oriented care with focus being primarily put on patient dignity (Salmond & Echevarria, 2013, p.
14). However, despite such changes in nursing roles, this process of transitioning is still
hampered with a number of challenges such as work pressure, development opportunities, room
for personal development and empowerment, and limited expertise (Stennis, Wingerden, &
Tanke, 2017). Nursing leaders are therefore faced with a critical task of ensuring that they
employ effective leadership skills that will foster teamwork, nurses’ communication and
negotiation skills, coaching, and flexibility in order to ensure that the change in roles of nurses is
smoothly effected to the betterment of the patients’ outcomes (Wildey & O’Brien, 2012, p. 7).
The future of nursing is also faced with transformative changes that are supposed to be
spearheaded by their roles, education and respect that they have earned over the years. It is
further expected that nurses have a major role to play in this transitioning but in order to do so,
there are a number of issues that must be addressed. In this case, nurses are expected to
understand the factors that drive the change especially when considering the health care needs
and the diversity presented by older adults. Such factors may be realized in their competencies
including their attitude, skills and knowledge, and their mandates for practice for which they are
bound by as a group of professionals (Salmond & Echevarria, 2017, p. 12). Therefore, nurses
will be required to exhibit full partnership and be relentless in their efforts in a bid to achieve an
enhanced patient care experience and also realize improved outcomes for the elderly population.
Reflection on Gaps in Knowledge and Its Importance on for Future Nursing Practice as a
Soon to be New Graduate Nurse
With a critical role to play in promoting the health of elderly individuals, existing
research that focuses on the diversity of the challenges that are faced by nurses is limited. This

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area therefore presents existing gap in research that should be focused on in future studies.
Hence, as a new graduate nurse, there are myriad organizational-based and culture-based
challenges will be faced faced in the provision of care to the elderly. Study by Kemppainen,
Tossavainen & Turunen (2013) attempted to illustrate the cultural challenges that are associated
with the changing roles of nurses. However, this study exhibits a gap in knowledge since it fell
short in detailing how organizational culture contradicts individual values and beliefs of
nurses in their practice.
Studies have also indicated that there are a number of issues that need to be addressed
while nurses are transitioning in their roles. As a nurse, I will face these challenges which are
predominantly associated with the range of expertise of nurses including their knowledge and
skills (Stennis, Wingerden & Ta\nke, 2017). However, there is need for future studies to focus
on the implications that these issues present on the individual nurses, their leaders and to the
health care organizations.
The changing health needs of the elderly also compounds to the diverse health issues that
are faced by medical professionals. As a new graduate nurse, the challenge faced in shifting
roles in order to provide care for the elderly necessitate that I take into consideration various
changing medical aspects such as patient-centered care and team-based care instead of the
traditionally favored provider-based and fee-for service care. In respect of such factors, future
studies need to focus on finding out how these aspects impact on the provision of care for the
elderly patients (Xue & Intrator, 2011). Furthermore, they need to specify the initiatives that can
be taken by newly practicing nurses as health professionals in order to cater for these issues as
well as reduce the cost of healthcare that is burdened on the elderly patients.

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Finally, available evidence indicate that nursing students as well as new graduate
nurses face significant number of challenges in terms of their perceptions of the nursing needs of
older adults. With limited experience, they become increasingly incapacitated to make timely
decisions regarding the health needs of the elderly (Hirst & Lane, 2016). Although nursing
students are fully aware of the need to recognize the health requirements of the elderly, future
studies need to illustrate the initiatives that can be taken by nursing students and new
graduate nurses in order to handle the challenges that they may face when working with the
elderly.

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