Abstract
As the life expectancy increases, the importance of elderly people’s quality of life becomes more apparent. The present investigation is aimed to assess the health-related Quality of life of elderly people living in two settings: (i) residents in a nursing home and (ii) elderly people living at homes in a district of North Iran. The study was conducted as a crosssectional analytical study. Data was collected by face to face interviewing technique using the Iranian version of the short form health survey questionnaire (SF-36) and a form designed by the researchers for recording sociodemographic characteristics. The data are drawn from 220 elderly (>60 years of age) sampled from both settings. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The average scores for several domains including total physical health, total mental health and overall health (total SF-36 score) were less than 50, which can be interpreted as a less desirable level of health-related quality of life in Iranian elderly people. Residents living at homes scored better in all domains of SF-36. Multiple regression analysis indicated that residency, marital status and education had a significant coefficient for total SF-36 score.The health related quality of life of elderly people in one city in Iran, particularly those in nursing homes, is inadequate. There is a need to design programs to increase elderly people’s interaction with others and establish social networks for them and opined that these may enhance a sense of positive quality of life among the elderly.
Highlights
Introduction of the health care costs, 35% of the hospital discharge, Life expectancy for the elderly in developed and and 47% of the hospitalization are devoted to the elderly developing countries has increased as a result of (Barry, 2000)
Based on the findings of the present study we might conclude that health-related QoL (HRQoL) in participants, residents in nursing home, was rather poor; even when compared with other studies like a study conducted by Tajvar et al (2008) on 400 elderly in Tehran, the capital of Iran, that showed the mean scores for the SF-36 subscales ranged from 53.5 to 70.0
It is probably that we investigated the HQoL of elderly on a base of questionnaire, and we did not measure other important dimensions of HQoL, such as health status of participants according to clinical and para clinical findings whereas elderly people experience diseases and impairments that threaten their quality of life (Carriere & Legare, 2000; Luleci et al, 2008)
Summary
Introduction of the health care costs, 35% of the hospital discharge, Life expectancy for the elderly in developed and and 47% of the hospitalization are devoted to the elderly developing countries has increased as a result of (Barry, 2000). The changing social scenario in terms of improvement in public health and medical advances , and urbanization, modernization, globalization, and the increase in the absolute and relative numbers of individualism have resulted in some disorganization elderly people is one of the major features of the world in the family and society norms and values, which prodemographic transition With attention facing many health and social challenges One study, to these facts, QoL is a critical consideration in national including a sample of 300 individuals above the age of 60 and international healthcare policies and decisions in in Tehran, revealed that the elderly encounter many each country. The same study reported that the other hand it has been demonstrated that people face underutilization of services amongst the elderly in Iran different physiological and mental problems as a result of might negatively affect their health status and QoL. On aging that have negative effects on their QoL
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