I have cut and pasted the interview here:
Procedure for Completing Assignment:
1. Identify an individual over the age of 65 who is willing to be interviewed for this assignment. This person can be a patient, relative or friend. Because the information that you are seeking can be reflective, thoughtful and possibly intimate, discuss this assignment with the individual carefully to determine that the individual is willing to engage in the interview. Expect the interview to last one hour.
2. Qualitative information: Provide a thoughtful and thorough written description of the interviewee. Use language which is rich in description as an introduction to the interviewee. Feel free to include interviewee’s thoughts an opinion.
3. Quantitative information: (DO NOT USE THE PATIENT’S NAME, ADDRESS, ZIPCODE, DATE OF BIRTH, PHONE NUMBER, SSN OR ANY IDENTYFING INFORMATION. Interviews that are submitted with any of this information will be returned to the student unread and ungraded. There will be no opportunity to resubmit the paper in this instance.
a. age in years
b. gender
c. race/ethnicity
d. occupational history
e. position in family of origin
f. educational background
g. marital or partner history
h. religious beliefs
i. cultural influences
j. living arrangements
k. transportation
l. abilities and support systems
4. POSSIBLE Interview Topics: (You may decide to ask more questions, ask these questions in a different manner or delete questions that are not pertinent to the conversation).
a. Tell me about your childhood, growing up years, family and what school was like for you
b. Tell me about your life right now: what is going well for you, not so well
c. Talk about the experience of aging. What is it like? How do you feel? Has it changed the way
you live or work? What advice would you give anyone about aging?
d. Does religion or spirituality play a role in your life? Has it always? Have your views on
religion/spirituality changed over the years? If so, how?
d. Do you have any health issues?
1) if yes, what do you know/understand about the issues? How do they affect your
daily living
e. Talk about your experience with the health care system. What do you like about your
experiences with health care? What could the health care system do to better meet your
needs? What would you say to a physician about the best way to take care of you? A nurse? A hospital administrator? Anyone else?
5. Reflection questions:
a. What did you learn from the interview about aging adults that was new and/or surprised
you?
b. What did you learn that will be helpful to you in your own experience of aging?
c. What did you learn from the interview about aging adults that will be helpful to you in your
practice? How might the information you used inform the development of nursing
interventions when interacting with older patients?
d. If given the opportunity to repeat this interview experience, would you do anything
differently? If so, why, and what would you do?
e. include any additional reflections about this interview, your thoughts about aging or anything
else that informed/informs your thinking about older adults.
Interview
Qualitative Information
The interviewee is a 69-year-old female patient who has visited the clinic for a medication refill. E.R. was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus 2 years ago. She has been taking Metformin to manage her condition since the diagnosis was made. As reported by E.R., she has been taking 500mg of Metformin orally per day. Metformin is a first-line oral medication for diabetes (Munshi, 2022). Although she experienced mild gastrointestinal side effects during the first few weeks of using the drug, E.R. indicates that she is able to tolerate the medication now. E.R. currently lives alone in their residential home in the city. Her husband died six months ago and her two daughters are already married. Her source of fear is that due to her advanced age, she might face challenges with accomplishing activities of daily leaving suppose she develops another health problem. E.R. adequately understands that she is at risk of developing health problems and that it can be a great challenge managing more than one condition considering the fact that she lives alone.
Quantitative Information/Interview Results
- Age in years: 69 years old.
b. Gender: Female.
c. Race/ethnicity: White.
d. Occupational history: The patient is a retired teacher. She retired 12 years ago from her teaching profession. Before her retirement, the patient had taught for 31 years in 6 different schools. She was a high school principal at the time of her retirement. She further indicates that she loved teaching and would wish that even one of her grandchildren becomes a teacher in the future.
e. Position in the family of origin: The patient is the breadwinner in her family. Since she currently lives alone, she does not have any dependents.
f. Educational background: The patient is a university graduate. She graduated with a Bachelor of Education in English (Language and Literature). She completed her high school and elementary school in the countryside where she stayed with her parents several years ago.
g. Marital or partner history: The patient is a widow. She lost her husband 6 months ago.
h. Religious beliefs: The patient is a Christian who believes in God. Her entire family belongs to the Catholic denomination. My relationship with God is still strong and I pray every day for God’s healing and protection.
i. Cultural influences: Since her childhood, the patient has always believed that sick people should seek treatment from the hospital. Her parents used to take them to the hospital with her siblings when they were young. Additionally, the patient’s parents taught her that eating healthy foods under the guidance of a nutritionist can protect a person from developing health problems. Due to these influences, the patient always visits the hospital whenever she is not feeling well. Besides, she has a family nutritionist who guides her on the best foods to eat. The patient started to received guidance from her nutritionist immediately after she was diagnosed with diabetes. Her main regret is that she believes that she could not have developed diabetes had she established strong relationships with a physician and a nutritionist early enough.
j. Living arrangements: The patient does not have any other special living arrangements as she lives in their residential home in the city. She is happy that they were able to build a home with his late husband because she now has a comfortable place to stay even after his death. She is planning to hire a house help who can help with activities of daily living.
k. Transportation: The patient has a personal car that she uses whenever she wants to leave the house. She rarely travels far. Although she can still drive, the patient states that she is planning to hire a driver next month to help with transportation issues.
l. Abilities and support systems: Despite her advanced age, the patient states that she is still active enough to accomplish house chores. Her main support systems right now since the loss of her husband are her two daughters. Both are married now and although they live far away, they call every to know how she is doing. They also help by sending her money for upkeep. The patient has a health insurance cover which helps her to access healthcare services. Her daughters and their children visit occasionally. - Aging experiences: The patient explains that a lot of things have changed in her old age years. She is unable to do most of the things that she used to do in her early adulthood years. She can no longer run in the morning like she use to do before. Again, she cannot walk long distances because her muscles and joints have weakened. The patient states that she feels lonely most of the time. Her advice to those who are aging is that they should go for routine medical check-ups as this can enable the doctor to identify and manage disease risk factors early.
Reflection
The interview has revealed a number of lessons about the lives of older adults. One lesson that I learned from the interview and which surprised me is that even older adults have regrets/despair about things that they did not do right when they were young. According to Lane and Munday (2017), ego integrity versus despair is a stage of psychological development that occurs in people aged 65 years and above. It is characterized by opposing feelings of life’s successes and failures. The stage prepares aging individuals to accept life’s experiences and move on with life. Another lesson that I have learned that will be helpful to me in my own experience of aging is to go for routine medical check-ups in order to reduce the risk of developing preventable diseases. According to Ngo et al. (2021), routine medical check-ups play a crucial role in health care because it is a promising way to take preventive measures or begin treatment early.
The interview has generated insights that have great implications for clinical practice. An important lesson that I learned from the interview about aging adults and that will be helpful to me in my practice is that aging individuals need strong support systems offered by both healthcare providers, family members, and friends. Apart from offering support with daily living activities, family members and friends serve as sources of social support for older adults which is good for their mental health and well-being (Donovan & Blazer, 2020). I will apply this information to develop nursing interventions for older patients. Precisely, I will connect older patients with close family members and explain to them about the importance of providing social support to their aging relative.
If given an opportunity to repeat the interview experience, one thing I would do differently is allocating a special day and enough time for the interview. The reason is that I discovered that aging adults have a lot of information to share with their healthcare providers and interviewing them in a hurry might prevent them from expressing their concerns exhaustively (Dobarrio-Sanz et al., 2021). My thought about aging is that individuals aged 65 years and above need specialized and individualized care. In order to understand their specific concerns, nurses should hold organized interview sessions with them to give them an opportunity to describe their aging experiences including the best way that they might want healthcare providers to care for them.
References
Dobarrio-Sanz, I., Ruiz-González, C., Fernández-Sola, C., Roman, P., Granero-Molina, J., & Hernández-Padilla, J. M. (2021). Healthcare professionals’ perceptions of loneliness amongst older adults: a qualitative study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(22), 12071. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182212071
Donovan, N. J., & Blazer, D. (2020). Social isolation and loneliness in older adults: Review and commentary of a national academies report. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry: Official Journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, 28(12), 1233–1244. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2020.08.005
Lane, T.D., & Munday, C. (2017). Ego integrity versus despair. In: Zeigler-Hill V., Shackelford T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_582-1
Munshi, M. (2022). Treatment of type-2 diabetes mellitus in the older patient. UpToDate, https://www.uptodate.com/contents/treatment-of-type-2-diabetes-mellitus-in-the-older-patient
Ngo, T. T., Hoang, P. N., Pham, H. V., Nguyen, D. N., Bui, H., Nguyen, A. T., Do, T. D., Dang, N. T., Dinh, H. Q., Truong, D. Q., & Le, T. A. (2021). Routine medical check-up and self-treatment practices among community-dwelling living in a mountainous area of Northern Vietnam. BioMed Research International, 2021, 8734615. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/8734615