Health Care of the Older Persons - Assignment Example

 Health care of the elder persons has been an important issue in the present society. Importance to the health care towards the elders has been the prime duty of the most of the countries of the 21st century. The sustainability of human beings depends upon the physical condition as well as on several other factors. The basic structure of health care system of the elders deals with individuals, groups who thrive to dedicatedly work for the promotion of overall health of people all around. The general structure of health system in a society comprises of private health service providers, occupational health and safety legislation, health insurance organizations, and presence of any unit working for the education and promotion of health. Over the generations elders have suffered from the malnutrition and the ethical responsibility of the politicians and the civil servants have been in question regarding their responsibility towards the elder care (Beck, et al, 2005). In any country the government frames policies regarding the quality of the health care they want to serve to the elders and the civil servants are provided the responsibility to work accordingly to provide substantial outcome to the strategies. The responsibility of the politicians and the civil servants also lies in safe guarding the ethical aspect towards the care of the senior citizens. Malnutrition signifies a type of mistreatment received by the elders in matters of their health (Capezuti, 2008, p.259) The article, “Malnutrition in elder care: qualitative analysis of ethical perceptions of politicians and civil servants” by Mamhidir, et al aims at finding out whether the politicians and the civil servants does pay attention to the malnutrition of the elder citizens as a part of their ethical responsibility and dedicates them to the cause. The article also tries to reflect whether the person in charge of the elder health care tries to investigate the causes of the malnutrition and the way they act to prevent the arousal of such causes. It has been found that due to malnutrition among the elders their overall health conditions have deteriorated significantly and have largely affected the well being of this portion of the society (Manthorpe &Watson, 2003. pp.62-169). Ethical problems have been identified in the past among the professionals associated with the adult health care. The professionals have experienced ethical conflict in providing good amount of care to the vulnerable elder patients. The rise in malnutrition cases over the years has been a serious concern over the years and the development of such cases needs to be slowed down for the betterment of the society (Crogan, et al, 2002, pp.341-353).Special attention needs to be concentrated on the malnutrition faced by the elders and the negligence of the nursing care in cases of malnutrition needs to be highlighted under the ethical code of conduct. The thoughts and the experiences of the politicians and the civil servants regarding the issues of malnutrition are important as their decisions and work affects the interest of the patients suffering from malnutrition. The importance of the article under study lies in the context that it aims at identifying the views of the politicians and their ethical responsibility which can be detrimental in analyzing their nature of work towards the issue and will also help in providing a view regarding their future plans towards eradication of the problem of malnutrition faced by elder citizens. The article studies the result of the interview of the politicians and the civil servants regarding the malnutrition and their ethical responsibility towards it and came out significant results. The article also suggested various methods to improve the ethical responsibility of the people associated with the health care of the elder people. Overall the article deals with an important subject in the present social context and tries to raise the attention of many towards a critical issue which are being faced by the elders around the world. The article, Malnutrition in elder care: qualitative analysis of ethical perceptions of politicians and civil servants conducted a primary research on the politicians and the civil servants and the qualitative approach of methodology was used for the purpose. The primary researched appeared to be less expensive than any secondary method of research, but involves more time ((Malhotra, 2008, p.106). The research was conducted on overall sample size of eighteen politicians and civil servants who were the elected candidates in the municipality level and the county council level of two different counties in Sweden. The person chosen for the purpose of the research were associated in the planning and the control of the elder care and were responsible for the purpose of budgeting and looking after the quality of the care which elder people received. The sample chosen for the purpose also comprised of employees of the executives dealing with the healthcare of the senior citizens. The age group of the participants was in the range of 43 to 66 years and the majority of the participants were female numbering to 13 who were serving the post in the department for tenure of one to twenty years. For conducting the research prior appointment and the consent of the participants were taken to prevent the arousal of controversies. (Mahmidir, et al, 2010, p.2) The methods of conducting the research was qualitative and the method was ideal for the study as qualitative research method involves a natural approach to the topic of study and tries to result in outcomes that can be derived from the facts and figures provided by the studies. This approach makes use of case studies, individual experiences, interviews, and related processes that explain the problems and interpretations of naturally occurring activities (Thomas, 2003, pp.1-2). On the contrary the other method of qualitative research uses numerical figures and interprets them through statistical measures. Through this approach particular occurrences of incidents or facts are represented through numerical computations. This approach tries to observe and explain the available numerical data in understanding of the underlying interpretations of such numeric figures (Burns, 2007, p.202). However the topic of the research involved at studying the motives of a certain group of people, in analyzing their ethical responsibility towards the malnutrition problem faced by the elder section of the society and thus the method of qualitative study suited perfectly for the cause. In the qualitative methods of the research, the research was carried out by taking the interviews of the chosen sample. During the interview mostly open ended questions were asked to know in details about the topic chosen for the reaserch. Follow up questions were also carried out in the interview process to know about the ideas in an elaborated manner. The follow up questions used for the purpose of the interview were aimed at highlighting the thoughts and the action of the interviewees. During the interview process the notes were taken by the interviewers to have clarity in the orientation process and to facilitate the understanding during the analysis of the views of the respondents. Non verbal communication methods were also used as a part of the interview process to help the process of data collection. However the methodology approach used for the purpose was not mentioned clearly in the article as the information regarding the types of questions and the structure of interview was not hinted in a proper fashion. In general concept there lays a huge variation in the types of the interview which are conducted for the process of research and the overall concept of interview is vast which is mentioned in the section below. The interview method used in research methodology is a kind of discussion which takes place to gather some knowledge, ideas or the views of the interviewed. Interviews can help in the data gatherings which are reliable and contributes significantly towards the research questions and the overall objective of the research. Interviews generally involve two or more persons. In case of the interviews which are conducted for the qualitative research purposes, the interview is mostly in the form of questionnaires and involves less personal questions. The interviews aim at describing the main themes of the interview process through the help of the questionnaire (Buchanan & Bryman, 2009, p.512). Generally three types of interviews are used for the research purpose which are structured, semi- structured and unstructured. In structured interviews generally pre coded answers are used to have a knowledge about the respondents views. The questions used for the purpose are predetermined and standardized and the same set of questions is used for interviewing the whole of the sample. To avoid any indication of biasness all the questions are generally read in the same tone of voice to the respondents (Mathis & Jackson, 2010, p.230). In case of the semi structured interviews the format is often non standardized and the questions which are asked often varies from person to person. Often some questions are not asked and some extra questions are included depending upon the mindset of the interviewee (Cousin, 2008, p.71). The third type of interview comprises of the unstructured interviews which are informal in nature. In this interviews no set of questions are framed before hand and a nature of free conversation is conducted and the detailing of the views of the respondents is achieved in this particular mode of interview. Unstructured interviews are also referred as the in depth interviews (Saunders, 2003, p. 264). A clear idea regarding the events and the behaviors can be gained in this particular mode. The main advantages of an interview process are that the interviewers have a direct interaction with the respondents chosen by him. During the process of interview the interviewer has the opportunity to cross question which may help him to gain an in depth analysis of the subject. Another main advantage is that in a face to conversation or an interview, the interviewer can analyze the psychology of the interviewee by analyzing his gesture and his body language and he has also the option of probing his candidate (Brown, 2006, p.162). However certain disadvantages are also there in the system as the interview methods are very time consuming and are also involves a lot of resource for its effective operation. The respondents in an interview may also prevent from disclosing any sensitive issues. Interviews often come out with the views of what respondents are interested in telling rather than the actual facts which may be happening practically (Gratton & Jones, 2010, p.158). The overall limitation of the interview lies in the fact that the interview method provides a constraint on the number of people to be interviewed to come to a decisive solution. As interview method involves a sufficient amount of time so often the unavailability of the time factor leads to reduction in the sample size of the interview which does not help to reveal the true facts or motives. Another limitation of the interview method lies in the fact that the interviewer needs to be well trained and should possess sufficient skills to influence the respondents. (Kirby, 2000, p.357)However the interview process is beneficial in gathering the overall view of the persons to find the overall trend in a particular matter of subject. In the article under study, the methodology part does not clearly mention the types of interview used for the purpose which fails to interpret the fruitfulness of the overall research. As the research was conducted to analyze the ethics of the politicians and the civil servants in matter of the malnutrition of the elders, the interview method with the politicians and the executives did not appeared to be a suitable approach to study the case. It can be comprehended that the politicians and the executives attached with the elder care will not disclose or admit any of their shortfalls and try to blame other people for the malnutrition. As in an interview method the interviewee can reveal the true facts, the same instance can be observed over here in this particular research conducted. Another significant limitation of the research observed is that as the research aimed to study the malnutrition of the elders and the responsibility of the political leaders, so it was necessary to consider the opinion of the elder citizens, who are actually the victims. The views of the elder citizens would have been far conclusive to study the ethical aspect of the politicians and the civil servants in maintaining their responsibility towards them. Their views would have been unbiased and they would have described the situations in much more details and would have disclosed important facts which would have been crucial for the study. As the sampling method used for the purpose was based on the random sampling so there lies the probability in the biasness towards the overall results. The research was conducted in only two counties in Sweden involving only 18 samples. The sample size and the area chosen are also not decisive to reach a generalized interpretation of the topic. The issue of malnutrition of the elders is present in most of the developing countries, so better result would have yielded if the research activity would have been carried out in other different parts. The conditions prevailing in the two counties of Sweden may differ from other parts of the world and different results may have been observed. Another disadvantage was there which was highlighted in the research itself was the conducting of two back to back interview sessions which might have caused tiredness to the interviewees. The overall results emerging from the research could not be generalized and the politicians and the civil servants interviewed were of the view that the causes of the malnutrition was due to various other factors other than their failure in maintaining of the social responsibility and held the medical staffs largely responsible for such cases of malnutrition in spite of their repeated monitoring. As a result of their views a clear picture regarding the responsibility of the political workers were not highlighted through the research. The above discussion critically analyzes the research paper conducted by Mahmidir, et al regarding the ethical perception of the politicians and the civil servants in issues relating to the malnutrition of the elder citizens. A careful analysis of the research methodology was conducted to identify the overall efficiency of the research conducted. Critical analysis reveals that the methodology incorporated in the research was qualitative analysis and it involved the primary method of data collection. Interview method was used as the tool of the data collection for the research and the use of hermeneutic model was used for the analysis of the data. The interview method involved a small specimen size of 18 respondents which was however inappropriate to reach to a general findings of the research. The interview involved the politicians and the executives, and their views were taken regarding their ethical perception. However the interview method failed to have a transparent view of their opinions and they did not revealed matters of controversial issues. The result of the research found that the politicians and the executives blamed mostly the care persons who are in charge of the elder care and denied them to be held as responsible for the rise in number of the malnutrition cases overall. The topic chosen for the research was very important as it aimed to highlight the reason of the malnutrition among the elders and find out the work ethics prevailing among the policy makers of the elder health care and what steps they take to prevent such cases to occur in the future. Increased participation and the unity among the people who are in charge of the elder health care should prevent the negligence towards them and thus the malnutrition should eradicate. However the results of the research conducted by Mamhidir could not effectively point the ethical aspect of the policy makers and the executives. The research article studied in the paper showed that data was primarily collected from two counties in Scotland which was however was not sufficient to analyze the ethical aspect of the politicians and civil servants over the matters of the case of the malnutrition In order to gain an edge over the results few methods are also suggested . As the matter of study in the research paper was the malnutrition of the elder citizens, their views in the subject were also necessary. The research would have gained concrete results if interviews were also conducted with the elder citizens facing the issue. Their viewpoint would have been judgmental in analyzing whether the section of the society in concern is maintaining ethics in delivering their commitment towards them. The underlying truth behind the rise in cases of malnutrition could have been easily brought into the forefront by the help of an unstructured interview involving a considerable number of sample sizes. The identification of the reasons is crucial and the politicians and the civil servants should rally show their work ethics in delivering their best for the cause of the elders. 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