We Don 't Learn From Experience

In the article entitled, “This Old Man” Roger Angell shows readers the struggle of a man growing old. Throughout the article, the 93 year old man displays all the struggles he has faced. Angell is trying to illustrate to readers that growing old is not all fun and games. It comes with saddness, heart-break, goodbyes, and many other sad things. Another struggle that is depited throughout the auricle is that young people tend not to listen to elderly people. He feels that elderly people in a way become invisible. Angell states, “when I mention the phenomenon to anyone around my age, I get back nods and smiles. Yes, we're invisible. Honored, respected, even loved, but not quite worth listening to anymore” (Angell 17). From his life experiences

The purpose of the assignment was to interview an “elder” member of society to gain valuable information and insight into an individual’s experiences and development, and how they pertain to biosocial, cognitive, and psychosocial development. I had the pleasure of interviewing a woman aged 68, who provided a glimpse of the wisdom she has gained over her lifetime as well as her daily interactions and age-related topics.

As a carer it is important how you come across to a person with dementia, they still have emotions and feelings. Your body language and facial expressions can be picked up on by the individual, if you let out a long sigh or raise your eyebrows or have a nasty look on your face then this will be abusive to them and they won’t trust you. Talk to them in a calm manner, hold their hand and smile at them, this will show the individual that you have a caring attitude and they will be better for it. If there are other people in the room who are maybe shouting or talking and laughing then this could cause a problem communicating with the person with dementia, too much noise will only frustrate the individual as they won’t be able to concentrate on any conversation.

It’s also important a person with dementia sees a nutritionist so they get the correct and balanced diet.

There are a lot of books and studies which tell us that as a person grows older certain personality disorders develop. These Personality disorders are reflected in their interpersonal skills also that older people tend to give unexpected responses to clinical treatment. Patients with such personality disorders are often described in as "difficult." (Committee, 2005)

As people get old a few of them will experience changes in cognition with age related capacity rather than intellectual capacity. There are some people who get both disparities of mentally and physically impaired that will led into depression due to aging process of their body. Even though, the forgetfulness is a common among older adults, we as healthcare providers must evaluate altered mental status of the patients. “The evaluation and management of altered mental status are broad and require careful history and physical examination to eliminate life-threatening situations”(Patti & Dulebohn, 2017). Therefore, it is very important to recognize the importance of difference between normal age-related symptoms and developing new health problems that can arise in this specific population. As elders get older their memory lapses it frustrating to them leading them to be more worried about changes in their memory. Nurses have a unique capability to promote a cognitive health and determine the possibilities of potential cases of the impairment in elders. The movie “On Golden Pond” Mr. Norman was a perfect example and showed that his symptoms were interfering with his everyday live when he almost burns down the house with fire, calling Bill by his daughter’s name Chelsea and getting lost in on the lake. Even though, Mr. Norman had heart and dementia problems his wife never discouraged him to do what he liked such as

I had an older adult female patient who was about 90 years of age. Her short-term memory was slightly diminished so she would ask a lot of questions about her care, and she would repeat the same questions over again. Also, because she did not understand her care she refused some of her medications. A lot of nurses that

The conversation I had with my grandmother, validated that elders at time, just need someone to talk to. You can learn a whole lot from an older adult’s life experiences and learn to apply it to your overall life

working with venerable people can vary in a range of different ways from disabled people

My interviews with Jane took place in Damen Student Center on Loyola University Chicago’s Lakeshore Campus. My main goal for my learning about older adults is to overcome my fear of aging and the elderly. I have always been nervous around older people because I feel that the process of aging is scary since it is an inevitable part of life that means you are closer to the death. By talking with Jane, I hope to realize that older people are of value to society, and that they can contribute a great deal to the world at large. My three biggest challenges with this assignment are 1) worrying that I’ll offend Jane with some of my questions about aging. I know she is elderly, and she knows it too, but I still want to be sensitive about it. 2) I want to make sure I obtain as much information as possible during the interview while maintaining a sense of dignity and respect. It is sometimes difficult to find a balance between the two. 3) I also want to have the opportunity to ask as many questions as I can so that I can gather as much information as possible during our time together.

It is very easy for somebody with dementia to become anorexic or obese because their short term memory can make them forget that they have had nothing to eat or in the opposite way that they have already had their something. This framework will help Amy because it would be their care workers responsibility to make sure they have had breakfast and write it down if she has or not for the next care worker who may be a part of her team because then they cannot just assume Amy has had something to eat or not.

A topic I learned more of this semester in regards to the older population was dementia. Some loss in memory function is an inevitable consequence of aging, and as one ages, it takes more time to process information and retrieve memories. However, "Dementia is a general term that refers to progressive, degenerative brain dysfunction, including deterioration in memory, concentration, language skills, visuospatial skills, and reasoning, that interferes with a person's daily functioning" (Mauk, 2014, p. 377). This loss of mental skills affects the ability to function over time, causing problems with memory and how one thinks, impacting these individual's overall quality of life.

In this explanation, we learned that handling Alzheimer’s patients will not always be easy. We were recommended to have a lot of patience and a lot of compassion for these patients. We greeter the patients individually and introduced ourselves. They seemed very confused at first but were really thankful to have someone to talk to.

For this visit summary, I have interviewed a 90-95-year-old assisted living resident that will be re-named Joyce for the purpose of this paper. Before constructing the interview, I was very excited and anxious to meet the resident I was interviewing for the first time. Upon arrival, I was put to ease once meeting a genuine elderly woman in the lobby that was just as excited to meet me for the first time. When reflecting on the interview I am glad to have had prior knowledge on therapeutic communication of older adults. I had seemly used all of the tips that the book had highlighted. These tips include attentive listening, authentic presence, clarifying, keeping focus, and providing intervals of silence (Touhy & Jett, 2016, p. 67).

Aging, in general, refers to changes that take place in the organism throughout the life span- good, bad, and neutral (Hooyman and Kiyak, 6). Usually, someone between the age sixty-five and older is referred to as “old person.” During my orientation, pre-internship interview and internship hours I have been able to make a lot of connections between this course and my observations. I have been able to walk the facility and freely speak with some of the residents. I was able to meet the oldest resident of the facility. She was 102 years old. There are also some young residents in the facility who are in their 40’s. The age range