Reflection on Healthy Aging

Running head: REFLECTION ON HEALTHY AGING
Reflection on healthy aging
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REFLECTION ON HEALTHY AGING
Introduction
Healthy aging is a process through which, social wellbeing and lifestyle of older adults
are determined. Clinical reasoning cycle provides the opportunity for the nurses to implement
evidence based framework into practice and implement safe and effective care to the patients as
well (Bherer, Erickson & Liu-Ambrose, 2013). For this assignment, the help of clinical
reasoning cycle will be taken to incorporate healthy ageing taking a short interview with an older
patient. According to the world health organization, healthy ageing can be defined as the process
of growth and enhanced functional ability of the elderly people so that they can continue to have
a content and healthy life (Williams, 2015). The primary focus of this essay will be discussing
about Mrs X aged 68 and her health conditions along with barriers that have to keep her away to
support a healthy ageing. This essay will attempt to demonstrate understanding of 4 key steps of
clinical decision making in order to promote healthy aging and make adequate clinical decisions
for the patient as per the key issues identified in the interview. Further it will also discuss some
preventive measures related to the patient for her better outcome.
Considering patient situation
The patient who has been selected for the interview is a 68 year old woman named
Sandra. She lived with her husband in suburbs in a two storey house. As the patient was
suffering with acute osteoarthritis, I decided to conduct the interview at her home. This helped to
decrease her inconvenience of visiting to the facility to get interviewed. As I reached her house
she took her time to open the door and I could ascertain that she had mobility restriction due to
her progressing osteoarthritis. I introduced myself to Sandra and she seemed to take some time to
recall our appointment. After sometime, she finally remembered and warmly welcomed me into
her house. Once inside her home, Sandra’s husband that after both their sons went abroad for

REFLECTION ON HEALTHY AGING
work, Sandra gradually became depressed, she hardly talks with anyone and keeps on forgetting
things every now and then.
Collecting cues
The collection of clues was based on Roper – Logan – Tierney Model which mainly
encompasses biological, socio-cultural, psychological, environment and political and economic
context (Williams, 2015). Upon my initial assessment of the house I noticed that although the
house had been tidy but there was an abundance of furniture and Sandra kept bumping into
furniture on her way inside. I conducted an interview with open ended questionnaire. During the
course of the interview process, Sandra informed that her mother and her elder sister also
suffered from joint pain and this helped me to understand that she has a family history of
osteoarthritis. According to Allen and Golightly (2015), genetic predisposition and family
history increase the chance of developing osteoarthritis. She also informed that she rarely visit
outdoors and mostly keeps herself indoors with her husband. Earlier she used to do gardening but
pain in her joints forbids her from practicing outdoor plantation. Uthman et al., (2013) is of the
opinion that mild to moderate physical activity among the older adults help to reduce the
chronicity of pain and improvement of the flexibility of joints. During the process of interview
conduction I also noticed that Sandra was getting lost within her words and at times uttering
unrelated sentences. This provided evidence behind her loss of memory. Lin et al., (2013) stated
that disorganized sentence construction and forgetting basic things are symptoms of memory loss
among older adults. Under the psychological context I realised that she was depressed as she
kept on repeating about who she misses her children. When asked about her medication plan,
Sandra thought for a while and say that she have medicines for her joint pain, high blood