The 78 million people who make up the Baby Boomer Generation are quickly approaching their “golden years.” With this staggering number on the horizon, healthcare professionals in all disciplines must better prepare and educate themselves to meet the healthcare needs of this demographic. At Florida International University (FIU) College of Nursing & Health Sciences, our faculty are conducting research that will help healthcare professionals better understand some of the special requirements that come with caring for an aging population.
Identifying Depression in Elderly, Long-Term Care Patients Late-life depression is prevalent and often unrecognized and untreated across many healthcare settings. In the long-term and homebound care venues, where nurses are at the front line of patient care, detection of depression is further complicated by the presence of dementia and other medical conditions. There is a definite need to provide nurses with the tools and skills to recognize depression symptoms in their patients, and clearly communicate the issue to physicians in order to implement proper care and intervention.
Through funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, FIU Associate Nursing Professor Dr. Ellen Brown has mounted studies to address the public health problem of inadequate late-life depression. Brown is an established mental health services researcher who has done extensive geriatric mental health intervention research in home healthcare settings. Dr. Brown has investigated the ability of home health nurses to correctly identify depression among older patients and to describe nurse and patient characteristics associated with more accurate assessment of depression.
Her research found that nurses who had more geriatric nursing experience were more likely to correctly identify depression, but as a whole, home health nurses have difficulty making accurate assessments of depression among older home care patients. Based on these findings, Dr. Brown developed a “tool kit” comprised of video portrayals of patient symptoms, a checklist of information to gather, and a training course that uses role-playing and other interactive methods to educate nurses. Several pilot studies have shown that the program improved nurses’ ability to correctly identify the at-risk patient and communicate this information to the primary care provider.
Bilingualism May Have Protective Effect on Cognitive Decline
In a published article, two professors from the Colleges Communications Science & Disorders Department point to another possible advantage of learning two languages delayed onset of the dementia process.
The authors are Professor Dr. Alfredo Ardila, and Department Chair and Clinical Associate Professor Dr. Eliane Ramos. They are two of the leading experts in the country on bilingual speech language development. Their article, “Normal and Abnormal Aging in Bilinguals,” appears in the journal Dementia & Neuropsychologia [December 2008; 2(4)].
Drs. Ardila and Ramos reviewed a number of different studies involving bilingualism and the process of aging, and the research suggests that there may be a protective effect when it comes to age-associated cognitive decline. It may even delay the onset of the dementia process.
Other important findings related to the decline of language abilities, and the effects of cognitive and psychiatric testing in different languages. Seemingly, during normal aging there is a more rapid decline of “acquired language” skills compared to “native language” skills, and elders clearly tend to prefer using their native language. In cases of dementia, the cognitive defect is more severe when the demented patient is tested in the second language versus the native language.
Professors Ardila and Ramos are delving into a fascinating aspect of the aging process by looking at bilingualism as a factor in how we evaluate and care for patients with dementia. This is one more example of just how much we can do to advance healthcare practices by embracing diversity as a core value in nursing and health sciences education and research.
