Posted: September 8th, 2022

Characteristics of the Aging Process

Describe the characteristics of the aging process. Explain how some of the characteristics may lead to elder abuse (memory issues, vulnerability, etc.). Discuss the types of consideration a nurse must be mindful of while performing a health assessment on a geriatric patient as compared to a middle-aged adult.

Characteristics of the Aging Process
The aging process involves the biological, behavioral, social, psychological and environmental changes in the human body. The process may involve greying of hair, susceptibility to diseases and failure of certain organs or senses of the body from function. The aim of this analysis is to describe the characteristics of the aging process, how these characteristics lead to abuse of the elderly and how a nurse would be mindful during health assessment of geriatric patients compared to middle-aged ones (Kitazoe et al., 2019).
The aging process is characterized by the failure of sensory organs, vulnerability to diseases and infection, body failure and isolation. The sensory organs such as eyes, ears and the skin may fail to respond to certain stimuli making it difficult for an elderly person to respond to certain biological or environmental changes. Also, this is likely to lead to disability as somebody parts such as legs and ears leading to hearing and vision loss. Moreover, elderly people are much isolated since as they age they lose most of their friends and always stay in-house without moving to other areas (Xu et al., 2017).
Consequently, these features make the aging people be prone to abuse and even vulnerable to certain conditions. Their relatives may take their weaknesses of failing sensory organs or body parts to influence their decision. Also, while in isolation they may be exposed to psychological conditions and diseases such as blood pressure and failing to see relatives.
Conclusively, a nurse has a great role to play in performing a health assessment of aging people. A nurse needs to adopt a comprehensive assessment health strategy where he or she evaluates past medical history, surgeries, mental state, medications, social status and substance abuse (Huntley et al., 2017). Also, the elderly require increased hours or days of monitoring so as to assess any conditions affecting them easily. The procedure is done for a long time since the body of people in the geriatric age has a slow response rate which makes it difficult to assess the issues affecting them.

References
Huntley, A. L., Chalder, M., Shaw, A. R., Hollingworth, W., Metcalfe, C., Benger, J. R., & Purdy, S. (2017). A systematic review to identify and assess the effectiveness of alternatives for people over the age of 65 who are at risk of potentially avoidable hospital admission. BMJ Open, 7(7), e016236.
Kitazoe, Y., Kishino, H., Tanisawa, K., Udaka, K., & Tanaka, M. (2019). Renormalized basal metabolic rate describes the human aging process and longevity. Aging cell, 18(4), e12968.
Xu, X., Wang, B., Ren, C., Hu, J., Greenberg, D. A., Chen, T., & Jin, K. (2017). Age-related impairment of vascular structure and functions. Aging and Disease, 8(5), 590.

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