Social Support and the Willingness of Utilizing Health Examinations among the Elders: An Exploratory Study

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 老年學研究所 === 101 === During the process of normal aging, gradual degeneration of physical function results in having chronic diseases. It has been widely accepted that periodic health examination is useful to prevent progression or deterioration of diseases. However, the rates of par...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yu-ChiehWu, 吳宇婕
Other Authors: Feng-Hwa Lu
Format: Others
Language:zh-TW
Published: 2013
Online Access:http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/62558598806872809976
Description
Summary:碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 老年學研究所 === 101 === During the process of normal aging, gradual degeneration of physical function results in having chronic diseases. It has been widely accepted that periodic health examination is useful to prevent progression or deterioration of diseases. However, the rates of participation of health examination services for elders in Taiwan were low since the launch of relevant health care services. Although there are many different focuses to study why elders resist health ex-aminations based on KABP Model, medical accessibility and social support respec-tively, research findings are difficult to explain old people’s health check-up behavior. However, while considering the relationships between individual characteristics of elders and the utilization of health examinations, there is a common consensus that the more social supports the elders have, the higher possibility of them to take health ex-aminations. In this study, the effort is to investigate the regime of living and life experiences of elders under preventive health-related policy. The aim is to explain: (1) The mean-ings of preventive health services to elderly people; (2) Influences of the role of social support on utilization of health examination services in elders. The materials of this research are based on the official documents, and the description of elders’ life expe-rience from participant observation. Our finding shows that the elders are high risk groups due to the fact that they are easily to get diseases in the process of normal aging. In this context, preventive health services are essential for healthy aging and early treatments. However, the el-ders might keep labor routine so as to avoid ontological insecurity caused by possible health problems found from health examination; especially those have less supportive networks.