Enhancing Quality of Life in Older Adults

Introduction:

Healthy ageing is the process in which health and social care providers provide high quality aged care to older people to determine and meet all their holistic needs [WHO, 2020]. This research proposal will present a secondary research study on how health and social care professionals can promote healthy ageing in older adults in the UK thereby improving their quality of living.

Research question, aims and objectives:

Research aim:

This research study aims to discuss how healthy ageing can be promoted in older people by supporting their health and social needs

Research question:

What are the strategies that health and social care professionals can use for supporting health needs for older people for promoting healthy ageing?

How do health and social care professionals can apply the relevant social theory in supporting healthy ageing?

What are the barriers and facilitators that are associated with promoting healthy ageing in older people?

Research objectives:

To identify the strategies that health and social care professionals can use for supporting health needs for older people

To analyse the ways in which health and social care professionals can apply the relevant social theory in supporting healthy ageing

To determine the barriers and facilitators that are associated with promoting healthy ageing in older people

Research rationale:

In the modern world, there is an ever-growing population of older adults in the UK, who face severe challenges in receiving the appropriate health and social care to meet their holistic needs (Cabeza et al. 2018.). The majority of the older people in the UK suffer from physical, economic, psychological, social and healthcare challenges that reduce their quality of daily living. Healthy ageing is the perfect solution for all these issues in which health and social care providers can support all kinds of needs of older people thereby providing them with high standard care to improve their living standards (Zaidi et al. 2017)

In this context, the selection of this topic “promoting healthy ageing in the UK by providing the high quality aged care to older adults” is highly relevant to provide new insight on how healthy ageing can be promoted in the UK. This topic is selected for conducting evidence-based research to support modern health and social care professionals with realistic information regarding the effective health and social care strategies that they can use to promote high standard caged care to older adults in the UK and how they can overcome the possible barriers that are associated with the promotion of healthy ageing.

Background and context:

Healthy ageing can be defined as the process of defeminising and supporting the holistic needs of older people thereby providing high quality aged care that is sufficient in promoting their health and wellbeing. As mentioned by Palmer et al. (2018), healthy ageing is an important aspect in modern health ad social care context which enables health and social care professionals to provide the social, emotional, physical, economic, health care and psychological support to improve the ability of older people in performing their activities of daily living.

IN the UK, more than 34% of older people suffer from severe injuries due to poor body balance and immobility. On the other hand, more than 21% of the older people suffer from malnutrition, lack of healthy diet and lack of systemic feeding habits which is because there is no single person to look after them (Caballero et al. 2017). There are many facilitators as well as many barriers that are associated with healthy ageing.

Facilitators if healthy ageing of older people that health and social care professionals need to consider is, the high-quality aged care, safeguarding environment for aged people, health education to older people, healthy diet, regular exercise, systematic lifestyle and mental and physical support (Ní Shé et al. 2019). While arranging the quality aged care for older people health care professionals must ensure that all these facilitators are met by implementing the care plan to promote the holistic wellbeing of older people. Challenges or barriers that health and social care professionals can face while promoting healthy ageing are poor skills of health and social care workers, lack of infrastructure of providing high quality aged care to older people, poor communication with older adults, lack of social connection to older people and lack of care and support to older people.

Theoretical framework:

This study has used the Social Theory for presenting how this theoretical framework can be implemented into the care process to support the health and social needs of older adults thereby promoting healthy ageing (Ní Shé et al. 2019). Many social perspectives are presented by different authors.

The functionalism approach present the fact that, healthy ageing can be promoted through developing the healthy relationship of older adults with their surrounding society ((Ocloo et al. 2017).

Functionalists believe that, through developing healthy interaction with society, older people can get the social support that they need for improving their daily living (Zaidi et al. 2017). Through maintaining healthy relation with neighbours and society members, older people can get physical, psychological and emotional support which are required for their healthy lifestyle.

Weber’s Social Theory highlights the fact that, healthy ageing is a broad aspect that is strongly related to the positive social activities (Cabeza et al. 2018). Based on this theory, health and social care professionals in the UK must encourage older adults in involving in positive social activities which can enable them to get the valuable societal support. Social theory plays a crucial part in developing healthy relationships of older people with tier surrounding society thereby meeting their social needs (Ocloo et al. 2017). Health and social care professionals can implement the appropriate social theoretical concept into the care delivery to older people for providing the older people with the social respect and support that they seek from their society. As mentioned by Malbon et al. (2019), there are social theories that define the social needs of people in different ways. In the context of promoting ageing, health and social care professionals need to implement the relevant social theory into their practices which will not only meet the social needs of older people but also empower them in the way they communicate and interact with their society to live a healthy life.

Methodology:

Description of the method:

In this research study, secondary research has been conducted to select relevant secondary resources. A secondary research method is a process in which research databases are collected from secondary sources such as online and offline articles, journals, magazines, governmental reports and books rather than directly collecting databases from participants (Largane and Morris, 2019). For conducting the literature review, online and offline books are used to get the relevant database on the research topic, inclusion and exclusion criteria are used to make the appropriate selection of books regarding the research topic. Online articles and magazines are also selected for conducting this research study. Here the secondary research has been conducted because the topic of this research proposal "promoting healthy ageing in the UK by providing the high quality aged care to older adults" is a broad concept in which the research questions cannot be met by analysing limited database that is retrieved by transcribing verbatim of some participants. On the contrary secondary research is appropriate for this research, which enables the researcher to access wide ranges of information on healthy ageing from secondary resources thereby can make proper inferences regarding the research study.

Search strategy:

This research study has used the online database for retrieving the relevant resources. In this context, the researcher has used relevant online databases such as CINAHL, PubMed, PsycINFO, BNI and Google Scholar for conducting the appropriate literature search and selecting the relevant research papers (Rothwell et al. 2019). However, the search obtained by using the BNI has been removed as the majority of the research papers that are obtained by this search are repetitive.

Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT are used to extend or narrow the literature search. Here AND’ and ‘OR Boolean operators are used to extend the literature search and the NOT operator is used to narrow the search.

Keywords that are used for this search are as follows:

Research ethics are the moral principles and guidelines that researcher must follow and implement while conducting any research study (Rothwell et al. 2019). In this research study, the researcher adheres to all research ethics in terms of maintaining the authenticity and validity of this research study. The researcher has received the ethical approval from the concerned ethical committee which is important before conducting any research study. While seeking the ethical approval from the concerned Ethics committee researcher need to ensure that, no human subject is harmed or disrespected throughout the research study. Here researcher has ensured that all the participants who attend the data collection are treated equality and respectfully. The confidentiality of personal and professional information of each participant are maintained. Each participant is informed about the objectives, goals, expected outcomes ad associated risk (if any) of this research study.

Beneficence is maintained throughout this research in which researcher ensures that this study is beneficial for the entire community by presenting evidence base information regarding how healthy ageing can be promoted in the UK. Beneficence is the important research ethics that researcher needs to ensure throughout conducting the research study (Largan and Morris, 2019). Beneficence is associated with principles based on which the research study benefits the entire community rather than benefiting any particular social group or individual. This research study aims to support the entire community by providing them with the in-depth knowledge regarding ways in which healthy ageing can be promoted in older people and their health and wellbeing can be supported.

Transferability is also maintained in this research study. Transferability is the research ethic that ensured that, if all the variables remain same in future then the database for this research study can be applicable in research study on the same topic in future (Rothwell et al. 2019). This research study ensures that, the research data that can be used in this study are evidence-based and highly authentic which can be effectively applied in the future research on the same topic if all other variables such as population, age group and demography remain same.

Non-maleficence is promoted throughout this research study, in which researcher ensure that all participants are protected from any kind of malpractices such as discrimination, bias, physical harm, abuse and disrespect.

Research outcomes:

Several outcomes are expected from this research study in relation to the community and individual welfare. This study provides evidence based information to modern health and social care professionals regarding the innovative ways in promoting healthy ageing in older adults in the UK (Largan and Morris, 2019). The outcomes of this research that benefit older adults in the UK by assisting them in developing self-management skill which enables them to improve their lifestyle. This research study will also benefits the entire community by raising their awareness regarding the importance of prompting healthy ageing in society and the ways on which society can contribute to promote healthy ageing. Moreover the outcomes of this research study will also benefit the future researchers to obtain authentic and highly realistic database regarding the research topic that give them a clear concept on the topic.

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Reference list:

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Largan, C. and Morris, T., 2019. Qualitative secondary research: A step-by-step guide. Sage.

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Zaidi, A., Gasior, K., Zolyomi, E., Schmidt, A., Rodrigues, R. and Marin, B., 2017. Measuring active and healthy ageing in Europe. Journal of European Social Policy, 27(2), pp.138-157.