Caring For Your Patients As If Their Real Lives Mattered: How Your Patients’ Lives Affect Their Health and Longevity and What You Need to Do About It
(5.7 Contact Hours)

 

“There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.”

-- Victor Hugo

The price of this course is $29.00. You will only be asked to pay for the course if you decide to grade the Post Examination to earn a certificate with Contact Hours (CEUs).

Learning Objectives

After completion of Caring For Your Patients As If Their Real Lives Mattered: How Your Patients’ Lives Affect Their Health and Longevity and What You Need to Do About It the participant will be able to:

1. Explain the roles of genetic versus behavioral and environmental factors on longevity and overall health.
2. Specify those health habits most important to long life and how they contribute to physical and mental well being in the elderly.
3. Describe how mental health and attitudes affect physical well being.
4. Discuss how social relationships and spirituality can help or hinder good physical and mental health.
5. State how life experiences can impact health and longevity.
6. Demonstrate how to promote healthy habits in patients by giving them information about longevity and good health.
7. Determine how to address elders’ health problems through improvements in non-medical aspects of their lives.
8. State how to combine physical, mental, social, and spiritual behavior interventions to meet overall health goals.
9. Explain how to coordinate an individual patient’s care with the local elder services network.

Content Outline

I. Learning from the Oldest-Old

A. Better Health Overall
B. Healthy Habits
C. Mental Well-Being
D. The Social Circle
E. Religion and Spirituality
F. Life Circumstances
G. Genetics
H. But Should My Patients and I Buy Green Bananas?

II. Practice Strategies

A. Giving Patients Information for Healthy Decisions
B. Encourage Health in Many Aspects of Life
C. Use Inter-relationships to Benefit Your Patients
D. Your Local Elder Service Agency is a Resource for the Whole Elder

III. Conclusion: What Does This All Mean at the End of the Day?

IV. References

When patients walk into your office or facility, they bring not only their symptoms but also their families, their ancestors, their social network, their spiritual and religious life, their environment, and much, much more. Each of these affects a patient’s health and the best ways to provide that patient care.

While regarding a patient’s health in relation to other aspects of life is always important, it may be even more so for your older patients. Older age is when a lifetime of chickens comes home to roost. Smoking, a bad diet, and too much stress finally show up in strokes, heart attacks, and cancer. Generosity and compassion rally friends and helpers when a catastrophic illness strikes. A strong spiritual faith and positive outlook on life may help an elder through later life’s losses.

In this course we will discuss what physical, mental, social, spiritual and environmental aspects of your patient’s lives are most important for healthy aging. We will learn how the strands of your elder patient’s lives weave together into overall well being. Finally, we will explore how we can work with our patient’s whole lives to improve health and longevity.