Analysis of Factors Affecting Aged Care Involvement in Australia

This report provides an environmental scan of factors impacting older people's engagement with health and social services, focusing on the Australian context. It analyzes four key factors: autonomy and empowerment, patient expectations, cultural influences, and staff attitudes, and discusses their impact on older individuals' success as partners in care. The report also addresses challenges such as geographic barriers, funding limitations, and staff perspectives, as well as the application of various care approaches like person-centered care and assistive technologies. The analysis highlights the importance of recognizing and addressing these factors to improve the quality and effectiveness of aged care services, ensuring older adults are active participants in their own care. This report is contributed by a student to be published on the website Desklib.

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Aged care
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FEBRUARY 27, 2020
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Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Factors affects older people’s involvement........................................................................................2
Challenges.........................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
As individuals age, their health requirements tend to become additionally complex
with an overall trend in the direction of declining capacity and high probability of
experiencing one or more health issue. it has been identified that with the declining physical,
older individuals also experience mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and stress.
According to the world health organization more than 15 per cent of the individuals aged 60
years or above suffer from one of these mental health issues (Baldwin et al., 2015). social
isolation is one of the causes of these mental health issues. Different researcher reported that
involvement of older people in health and social services (Henderson et al., 2017). This
particular report will discuss about the four major factors that affect older individual’s
success as partner in their care.
Factors affects older people’s involvement
There are four different key factors that affects the involvement of older people in the
care. First key factor is autonomy and empowerment. In different health care setting or aged
care settings, the autonomy and dignity of these individuals are endangered if they are not
provided with the proper information or chance to understand their health information and
make essential decision. These decisions are related to their care. Most of the individual
receiving health care services have desire to be involved in the decision-making process and
perform autonomy that should be recognised (Vahdat et al., 2014). their wished should be
respected by a health care provider. Different older individuals might not be involved in the
decision-making process about their health and wellbeing, which results in undesirable
worries and stress. This happened as the health care providers may think that the older
individual not have that understanding and confidence to make decisions about their health
problems. The health care providers might assume that that the health care need of an older

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adult is similar to other people. This reduces the opportunity for older people to be involved
in their care and participate in other healthcare practices (Dewing and Dijk, 2016).
Another main factor associated with participation of older people in care is patient
expectation. Some of the individual with acute or chronic health issues often feel anxiety,
thus they expect the health care professionals like doctors to help them in decision making.
The health care providers must encourage the older individuals to rias their expectation about
involvement in the treatment process. some of the of patients receiving free medical services
often feel they should not complain about it, and are willing to receive health care without
thinking about the quality. This reduced expectation of older individuals reduced their
involvement in the care process. influence of culture on care is well studied (Stein‐Parbury et
al., 2015). Older individuals belong to the communities like Aboriginal & Torres Strait
Islander often expect that their cultural values will be respected in the health care setting. a
health care provides must have appropriate information about the culture and respect its
values in order to engage the older person in his or her care. Valuing and respecting the
culture of an individuals allow them to feel safe and valued. It also develops a sense of
belongingness and empowerment which ultimately improves their participation in care (van
Gaans and Dent, 2018).
Attitude of staff members can also affect the participation of an older individual in the
care. Different researchers identified that no participation occurs as the result unfavourable
behaviour of health care providers. Patient who are not being listened are often feel neglected
and thus avoid participation in care. Limited communication between the older individuals
and health care provider and environmental constraints are the major influencing factors
(Dixit and Sambasivan, 2018). Experienced or senior nurse often avoid communicating with
older adults and spend less time at the bedside, thus fail to develop a therapeutic relationship
with the client. Therapeutic relationship is the main requirement of every health care setting

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as it allows the patient to feel being cared and empowered. Studies conducted in Australian
hospital identified that some of the nurses avoid interacting with the older adults as they have
less time to develop a therapeutic relationship with the client due to their busy schedule.
Some of the nurses have desire to continue the control over the older individuals and avoid
listening them carefully (Clark et al., 2013).
Psychological support is the key factor associated with patient satisfaction and
enhanced involvement in the care. The increased level of psychosocial support obtainable to
older patients to support them stay on treatment track and uphold a positive outlook.
Caregivers and health care professionals typically comprise some information regarding an
older patient’s societal and environmental conditions when recording patient histories.
Though, these histories frequently fail to disclose important nuances affecting older patient’s
health. For instance, EHRs and claims information comprise basic demographic data but do
not essentially disclose that an older patient be located in a neighborhood that have less
access to reasonably healthy nourishment. Deprived of knowledge of such information,
providers might miss vital information on issues that influence a patient’s well-being and
may recommend a treatment strategy that is unsuitable or unachievable. Psychological
support helps the client to understand that the health care providers are there to help them and
they can ask them anything about their health problem and future steps to manage them.
(Edvardsson et al., 2011).
Challenges
Several Australian older individuals living in rural and distant areas of Australian
states have to travel 100s of kilometres to receive healthcare service, or have to wait for the
healthcare professional or providers to visit them. The quality care provided by acute and
subacute healthcare settings in rural and remote parts are described to be insufficient, as is, to
a reduced extent, access to the aged care facilities (van Gaans and Dent, 2018). The necessity

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to travel such a long distance is a main barricade for individuals in distant locations, chiefly
older people, looking for health care. Lack of funding is another challenge for health care
professionals to provide aged care and services. Aged care professionals have long contended
that the funding provided by the Australian Government is inadequate to encounter the cost
of delivering elder care and that much of the elderly care subdivision is functioning at a loss.
The elderly care employees are ageing and there is substantial concern between policy
makers and facility providers about retaining remaining staff and attracting young staff to the
aged care sector (Robertson et al., 2016).
Perspective of health care providers like nurses might negatively affect the effective
care to the older individuals. It has been reported in different research articles that the
perspective of new nurse about aged care is declining and their interest in this sector is
reducing and many health care professionals leaving their jobs (Lennox et al., 2019). The
service gaps in the present suite of society care might result in additional frequent hospital
admission. Quality of assistive technology used in Australian is another factor can increase or
reduce patient interest in government health care settings. The declined quality of assistive
equipment hinders families to admit their loved ones to the health care settings. The
government bodies must make policies that enable health care provider to install advance
assistive technology in every health care setting. Case management is directed through the
principles of autonomy, generosity, nonmaleficence, and fairness (Mittinty et al., 2018). Case
managers in health care setting understand the essence of attaining quality outcomes for their
patients and obligate to the suitable use of possessions and empowerment of patients in a way
that is helpful and impartial. Patient-centred upkeep is about treating an individual receiving
healthcare services with self-esteem and respect and connecting them in all decisions making
processes about their treatment. This kind of care is similarly termed ‘person-centred care’.
Health care settings provide patient centered care are able to involve the patients in the care.

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To develop a patient centered care the health care professional must develop a therapeutic
relationship with elderly by using effective communication skills (Freilich et al., 2019).
Conclusion
Aged care provider supports to the older individuals to assist them with their daily
living and other requirements. To achieve the health care goals already set for the older
patient, health care providers must involve them in the care being provided to them. for that
they must recognise the factor affect their involvement. Some of the factors are autonomy
and patient empowerment in the care process, patient expectations related to the quality of
care being provided in the health care setting, careless attitude of nurses towards elderly
patients, and lack of psychological support provide by physician or other staff. There are
some challenges might be experienced by health care providers and patient while receiving
aged care. For example, necessity to travel a long distance, lack of funding in aged care
sector, and lack of young staff.

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