Changing perceptions of healthcare

This week, our students are working on their various sections of the Introduction. One such section pertains to perceptions/changes in those perceptions of the oldest old with regard to healthcare.

This has me thinking about the oldest old individuals I have known relative to their health care and I cannot help but recall the sense of powerlessness I witnessed. Granted, these were my grandparents at a time in life when their bodies were failing them in serious ways - but I cannot help but wonder what it actually feels like to have one's physical body (and perhaps, knowledge of one's psychological body, too) deteriorating as one wonders about how he/she will manage health care. Obviously, worries about health care/funding of care are individual and certainly some do not have to worry about the particular issue of access to care. My grandparents all had sufficient/very good health care - so the powerlessness to which I refer is not about whether or not they would be able to access care. Rather, it was the simple powerlessness of not knowing when the body would simply give up.

Some of my grandparents had multiple heart attacks at older ages, before they passed away. I can only imagine how stressful those experiences were with regard to their individual perceptions of healthcare; how those experiences must have helped morph/shape perceptions based on a previously more robust physical self.

This remains a very compelling area of study for me – I am at a point where I can think of numerous ‘Pathways and Gatekeepers: Moderating, Mediating, and Proximal Processes’ as Poon and Cohen-Mansfield (2011) put it re- variables and influencing factors in the relationship between oldest old and their well being.
My head leans toward the social psychological models to try to make sense of these variables/influencing factors, such as the study of attitudes and personal bias – but these are just few of a potentially large field of factors. I am glad to see this field of study receiving more attention.

AES

Poon, L.W. & Cohen-Mansfield, J. (Eds.). (2011). Understanding Well-Being in the Oldest Old. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.