Comparing Health Needs Assessment of the Aboriginal and Han Elderly

• Main Authors: Lin, Shuhuan, 林淑緩
• Other Authors: Lee, Lingling
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/22480149535017826900

碩士 === 慈濟大學 === 護理學系碩士班 === 101 === The average life expectancy of Taiwanese older people has increased resulting in that the trend towards an aging society has become more obvious. Health care for the elderly is one of the important social issues and policies. Medical care systems should take elderly care into consideration, so that the health care older people needed can be fulfilled. The general health status of the elderly can be evaluated with multi-dimensional assessment instrument. However, current instruments of health need assessment related to health care of older people mostly focus on one dimension. They either evaluate health needs of the older people with the number of their diseases or classify different levels of disability according to the global scores of functional index scales. Care centers choose health assessment instruments of different measurement dimensions based on individual circumstance. Previous studies found that common parameters for comparison were insufficient because the instruments used vary widely. A cross-sectional design was used in the present study. Random sampling method was used to select the aboriginal and the Han older people were recruited in Shiou-Lin Townshop and Hualien City, respectively. EASY Care Standard instrument was the health assessment instrument. Data were acquired from individual interviews and analyzed by SPSS for windows 19.0, using descriptive statistics, chi-square test, independent sample t-test, correlation analysis, and stepwise regression. The total number of subjects was 180. The health needs of aboriginal older people were higher in most of domains and categories in addition to the two domains, which were accommodation and finance（t=2.24, p=0.03）, and social participation/isolation （t=1.06, p=0.29）. Of all the eight domains, the health need of mental health and well-being domain was found to be the highest in the aboriginal older people, while the domain of social participation/isolation was the highest in the Han older people. However, the lowest health need was in the domain of looking after oneself among aboriginal older people, while the lowest health need was in the domain of safety among Han older people. In three cross-dimensional categories, the priority of the health need was the risk of breakdown in care for the aboriginal elderlies（0.21, 0.15）, while the highest health need for the Han elderly was the risk of breakdown in care（0.13, 0.11）, with similar health need in the risk of falls（0.13, 0.14）. Different genders of the aboriginal and Han elderlies had similar health needs in the eight domains, with that the only difference in the risk of breakdown in care. The difference among female aboriginal and Han older people was greater than that in the male aboriginal and Han elderly. In the eight domains and three cross-dimensional categories of health needs, the aboriginal and Han elderly both demonstrated the highest correlation between the need to look after themselves and independence scores. The Han older people were found to have more risk factors than the aboriginal one in the three cross-dimensional categories. The present study found that aboriginal older people had higher health needs than the Han older people in most domains. Future studies are required to focus on the difference in the health needs of the aboriginal and Han elderly, which should be taken into consideration in the intervention programs made by community medical services. Appropriate and individualized long term care services should be provided for the purpose of enhancing the health care quality for the elderly in the community. It is suggested that the health assessment instrument of EASY Care Standard to be used in the clinical researches on the community elderly in the future, such as in experimental researches, in order to evaluate the effects of the interventions.