Quality of life vs. old people’s functioning at the time of the covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Introduction: The whole world is dealing with the consequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which affected mostly elderly people. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it practically impossible for elderly people to function independently. Taking into consideration the elderly population and its prognosis, the evaluation of the elderly people’s quality of life is more and more important. Both doctors and people involved in medicare claim that there is a need for investigating elderly people’s life quality because the health problems which decide about this quality make effective treatment more difficult. Aim of the study: The aim of this paper is to evaluate the quality of life and functionality as far as doing daily chores by elderly people is concerned and the factors which decide about it at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Material and methods: The research was done with a group of 1008 people (705 women, 302 men) at the age of 60–97 (approximately 71.0 ± 8.1). The questionnaire which was used was created by the people who carried out the survey and the Polish scale WHOQOL-AGE was used to evaluate the quality of life. Independent functioning in a group was evaluated by means of the Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale (IADL). Results: The approximate result of evaluating the quality of life using the WHOQOL-AGE scale was 67.20 ± 15.61. Social and demographic factors which decide about the quality of life in a statistically significant way are: age (p < 0,000), education (p < 0,000), place of living (p < 0,029), marital status (p < 0,000), economic situation (p < 0,000), the status of living (p < 0,019), status of dexterity (p < 0,000) and professional status before retirement (p < 0,018). Conclusion: There is a need for many activities to improve the life quality of elderly people in every aspect of life. Those activities should take into consideration the life situation, functioning status, and elderly people’s expectations. Actions taken with the aim of improving elderly people’s life quality should involve interdisciplinary monitoring of health as well as promotion of physical activity, which will improve elderly people’s ability to perform complex daily activities (IADL).