Maximizing the Health of Older Adults

Abstract

Life expectancy continues to rise in the United States whereby older adults are living to be 80 years old on average (Weiss & Mushinski, 1999). The fastest growing segment of the elder population constitutes individuals 90 years of age and older. Projections show that this group will increase from 1.2 to 9.6 million by 2050 (Weiss & Mushinski, 1999), with a 90-year-old male expected to live an average of 3.85 years while a 90-year-old female will live another 4.67 years (Centers for Disease Control, 2002). The estimates underscore the fact that the majority of these elders will be women (U.S. Congress Senate Special Committee on Aging, 1988). This stunning growth in the number of the oldest old population calls for making independent living a major priority for clinical and public health professionals. But it is difficult to define healthy aging as this is a developmentally occurring phenomenon that occurs at different degrees at different times for each aging adult. Because aging, particularly health decline, frequently happens insidiously, elders on any given day are faced with the idea that their current quality of life may be As Good As it Gets. In the 1997 movie, the obsessive– compulsive writer Melvin Udall (played by Jack Nicholson) asked this rhetorical question when he becomes frustrated with the events of his life. Many older adults may never contemplate their life’s path, instead they allow life to happen and eventually they submit to giving in to a lesser quality of life, that is, their independence. For some reason, many grow older with the idea that the last train stop in life is the nursing home. A paradigm shift needs to occur so that more elders take on life akin to the two older adults in the movie Bucket List, that is, living life to its fullest and independently as possible. Health care providers also need to rethink the aging process; not every elder is doomed to a nursing home in his or her last decade of life. With individuals living longer, the health care system needs to focus on the embodiment of maintaining health and vitality. According to Gawande (2007), the nursing profession needs to rethink this developmental life stage. Greater value should be placed on maximizing independent aging such that elders need not trade their independent living arrangement for an institutional bed that centers on rigidly scheduled routines. Unfortunately, there is very little research in this area and the research that does exist is relegated to safety and attending to chronic illnesses.