Exploring the relationship between nutrition status and long-term care need of the elderly in community

• Main Authors: Huang Ya Ching, 黃雅靖
• Other Authors: Lee, Shyh-Dye
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/65676768516430440995

碩士 === 國立台北護理學院 === 長期照護研究所 === 98 === The rapidly growth of aging population has become a worldwide symbol and trend. It has also made a great impact on the health and care needs in most countries. Of all the needs brought along, nutrition issue has been the most critical but easily neglected one, esp. to be related with their activity and participation of life functions. However, such relationship has been scarcely discussed. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the nutrition status of the elderly in a community, and the correlation between it and the long-term care. 110 elder samples were recruited from a community in northern Taiwan. The data was collected by face-to-face interview, direct measurement and semi-structured questionnaire completing. The questionnaire was composed of the basic information, basic mental status(SPMSQ), nutrition assessment (MNA & MNA-SF) and hierarchy of the care required (HCR). The data was analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics to detect the correlation between the nutritional status and the long-term care. The results have been shown in several folds as follows. (A)The elderly in community, with poorer nutritional status and no ones to live together, had higher care needs in daily life. (B) With poorer nutritional status, they had higher care needs in instrumental daily life. (C) With poorer nutritional status, they had higher care needs about cognitive function and emotion.(D) With poorer nutritional status, they had higher care needs overall. It was found, based on different nutrition level analysis, malnutrition impacted remarkly on IADLs , ADLs and overall care needs. However, with restrictive and purposive sampling, some community-dwelling elderly with functional limitation had no chance to be recruited, therefore this research model without fully picture conldn’t be finalized and spreaded. Nevertheless, the study provided some hints on the nutrition status to remind the intervention of care and instruction ot other coping tactics, to lower the limitation of activity and participation caused by malnutrition, rather, to validate life quality and aging in place.