Prior to this gerontology course my views of older adults and working with them were based off of working in an assisted living in high school and just interacting with them in my personal life. Many of the older adults in the assisted living were kind and would love to talk and would even tell me about their life and stories from their past. I feel as though many of the older adults I have interacted with were pleasant and gave me a good view on older adults. However, there are a few older adults that were unpleasant and skewed my view of older adults for a while. In my experience older adults seem to get agitated easier than other populations and I discovered that I am not the best at deescalating those type of situations. I had to take a step back for a while and think about if I would want to work with older adults as a nurse in the future. Based on my past with older individuals I think I would be capable of working with older adults however, I think I would work best with a different population of people.
Based on the topics we have learned in class I now believe that older adults may need more support and someone to look out for them more than I originally thought. I think sometimes we treat older adults as if they cannot do anything for themselves and they then can no longer do things for themselves. We should instead allow older adults to do as much as they can and then help them with what they can’t do. I also think sometimes individuals don’t do enough for older adults and rule out symptoms of disease by just saying that the individual is old. I believe that a good mix of helping where it is needed and letting them do what they can is important. Using the information, I learned from this course I would allow my patients to do as much as they can for themselves and then help them with whatever they can’t do even if it takes them awhile to do. I feel as though people are in a rush and that is why they do everything for the patient because it may take the patient awhile to do for themselves. I would also recommend medication reconciliations to be done often when medications are being changed and new diagnoses are being made because this can cause a prescribing cascade. I think this was an important lesson I learned from this course instead of just connecting some of the symptoms to the patient being old I will instead look deeper into what could be causing these symptoms.
This course taught me that in my own life I should make sure I consume all the nutrients and vitamins needed to promote bone health. I know that menopause and birth control and other things that I do now can make me more prone to osteoporosis and I want to help prevent that as much as I can. I also learned that it is important to have power of attorney and a living will. I think in the future I will make certain that I have those documents. I am active now and have a lot of social support from my friends and family which I think is important because as I age, I will need these people around to help me. I also think it is important that I am active because this keeps my body moving and helps not become stiff. This course taught me to value what I have now while I have it because later in life, I may not be able to do everything that I can do now, and we take that for granted sometimes. I want to be remembered for all of the things I have accomplished in life and leave my mark by being remembered for all of the good I have done. I want my patients to remember me as a nice and caring person who changed their life in some way even if it was as small as making them smile in the morning and having a great start to their day.
