Nurs Health Sci. 2011 Mar 15;
Rejeh N, Heravi-Karimooi M, Vaismoradi M

The purpose of this study was to explore Iranian nursing students’ perspectives regarding caring for elderly patients. A qualitative design, based on the content analysis approach, was used to collect and analyze the perspectives of 25 senior nursing students who were providing care for elderly patients in the medical and surgical wards of two teaching hospitals in Tehran, Iran. After using purposeful sampling to select the participants, semistructured interviews were held in order to collect the data. During the data analysis, two main themes and six subthemes emerged. The first theme was “the barriers to caring for elderly patients”, with the subthemes of “policies and rules of the organization”, “a lack of educational preparation”, and “an inappropriate physical environment”, and the second theme was “the facilitators to caring for elderly patients”, with the subthemes of “religion and cultural norms”, “role modeling”, and “previous exposure to elderly patients”. This study informs international audiences of the factors that influence the quality of care of elderly patients so that strategies can be devised in order to prepare nursing students to meet the physical and psychological needs of elderly patients.

There is a hidden tax break many local families don’t know about. Thousands of local families care for elderly loved ones. They are working longer hours, paying higher gas and medical bills and struggling to find the money and time to care for aging loved ones.

Since Jan. 1, more than 10,000 baby boomers a day turned 65. This pattern will continue for the next 19 years, according to the Pew Research Center.With these astounding numbers, many of us are confronted with and are caring for aging and elderly parents. Those of us with siblings are sharing in the responsibilities, which too can be a challenge. Yet there’s hope, and this hope is manifested …

Most world cultures — even the most primitive — reserve a special status for the elderly. They are honored … hand its senior citizens over to someone else — institutions, home-care agencies, sometimes overworked and unskilled elder sitters.

We all know that getting old is not for sissies. But neither is taking care of the elderly for the faint-hearted. Some three million Canadians are currently caring for their aging parents, says Bart Mindszenthy, co-author of Parenting Your Parents and co-founder of the new website www.mycarejourney.com for which he writes and which he describes as a virtual community …

As humans live longer, more and more people are finding themselves caring for their elderly parents. And its not unusual for problems to arise between brothers and sisters.

Working full time as a single parent and raising a family is no easy task, but add the duties of caring for an elderly parent, and the stress level explodes.

Caring for an elderly parent can tear apart sibling relationships, especially when the division of responsibilities is less than equitable.

The Archbishop of Westminster is to call for more help to be given to families caring for elderly relatives. Speaking at London’s Westminster Cathedral, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols will ask for “special attention to be given to the sick and vulnerable”.

February 26, 2011 –

This week, the Leicester Mercury launched our Care For The Elderly campaign, in which we are calling on the NHS to ensure elderly people are…