Working with Older People

This article discusses the challenges faced by a healthcare professional while taking care of an elderly patient and identifies motivation and stress as two major health-related topics. It also suggests ways to modify behavior to deal with these challenges.

Running head: WORKING WITH OLDER PEOPLE
Working with Older People
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
Understanding the factors that are imposing impact on the physical as well as clinical
wellbeing of the healthcare professionals can be considered as on of the crucial aspect of clinical
practice (Adler & Rodman, 2006). Being a student of final year, I have been appointed to take
care of Rosa Caliper who is an adult 81 years old woman and is suffering from a series o acute
and chronic health condition.
Identification of 2 health-related topics
While taking care of Mrs. Rosa Calpari, I had faced several challenges while dealing with
her extreme anxiety and aggressiveness. The two major health related challenges I feel that have
imposed major impact on my behavior while working with Rosa are motivation and stress.
According to researchers, motivation can be defined as the internal process that helps an
individual to move towards his or her goal (Rollnick, Miller & Butler, 2008). Lack of motivation
had often made me feel that I would not be able to effectively manage the adverse situation I was
going through while treating the mentioned healthcare service user. Secondly, due to lack of
prior experience, I was facing communication while handling even the smallest situation. High
stress level while managing the emotions issues of Mr. Calpari had imposed negative impact on
my verbal communication with her. This in turn had resulted in deterioration of the relationship
between the healthcare professional and healthcare service user and had the potential to impose
highly negative impact on the health of the patient.

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Reasons behind anticipating the topics
Considering the fact that the mother tongue of Rosa is French, she was not able to communicate
with the nurses as well as with me. Since my first language is English, I , on the other side was
not able to understand her French accent. However, Rosa have given effective effort to deal with
the issue. Lack off communication between the me and the healthcare service users had given
rise to lot of issues. Firstly, being an elder citizen, Rosa was getting immensely frustrated since
the healthcare service users were unable to understand her specific requirement. Communication
gap between the healthcare service provider and Rosa made her fill that she was not getting
effective treatment. Moreover, this had imposed negative impact on her philology as well. Rosa
was demonstrating reluctance to listen to my advice since she was unable to completely
understand the same. Besides that the fear of not bwing able to recover completely due to lack of
treatment and effective communication had made her highly aggressive and rude towards the
staff. This in turn was imposing highly negative impact on her health.
When it comes to motivation, I feel lack of experience and seeking instance result was
highly affecting my professional skills. Being an elderly health care service user, Rosa had
refused to comply with the physiotherapist’s recommendations as she was fearful that this would
cause her pain. I, being the practitioner who is responsible for taking care of her had taken
several verbal as well as communicational steps in order to pursue her to undergo the above
mention test. However, she had demonstrated high resistance to the suggestions given. This in
turn had imposed negative impact on my motivation. Several time it made me feel that I wont be
able to recover her completely from her current condition. Along with that, the fear of failure had
even pushed me show inappropriate attitude towards Rosa which in turn had enhanced the gap
between me and the patient.

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Methods of modifying the behavior
In order to deal with the above mentioned issue that has the potential to adversely affect
my carrier, I will undergo the following steps. In order to enhance my communication skills, I
will undergo effective training session. The training session will help me to assess the reason
behind the demonstration of anger of the healthcare service users. Moreover I will be able to
demonstrate more sympathy and concern towards the elderly healthcare service users. In order to
deal with the language issue faced by Rosa, I will recruit an interpreter. An interpreter is defined
as an individual who has the ability to translate one language to another so that both the parties
can understand it. Involvement of an interpreter will solve the issue faced by m as well as Rosa
due to her French accent (Kring et al., 2010).
In order to motivate myself, I will undergo various educational sessions which will
enable to motivate myself while suffering from burnout. Apart from that I will watch
motivational videos in order to keep myself motivated and provide quality care to elderly
healthcare service user.

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Reference List
Adler,R.B.&Rodman,G.(2006).UnderstandingHumanCommunication(9thed.).NewYork:Oxford
Kring,A., Johnson,S., Davison,G., & Neale,J. (2010).AbnormalPsychology.(11thed.).New
Rollnick,S., Miller,W.R., & Butler,C.C. (2008) Motivational Interviewing in
HealthCare:Helping Patients Change Behaviour. New York: Guilford Press
University Press (Chapter4:Listening,&Chapter5:Nonverbal Communication)
York:Wiley (especially Chapter5 :AnxietyDisordersandChapter8:MoodDisorders)