Geriatric Care (Nursing)

00:01 Hello, welcome to our series on Geriatric Nursing.

00:05 Now I know this may not be what you think is your passion in nursing.

00:10 So here's what I'm going to ask you to do.

00:12 I want you to picture your favorite elderly person.

00:16 See this guy? That's my dad.

00:19 I adore him.

00:20 He's one of my heroes.

00:22 And I try to think about Geriatric Nursing as if it was my dad, someone I really loved going through the health care system.

00:30 So that's what I'm going to ask you to do.

00:32 Picture who's most important to you who happens to be elderly.

00:36 And I want you to think about them as you're finding the motivation to study this topic.

00:41 Now, I'm going to introduce you to two friends, Enrique and Jose.

00:45 And they're going to help you learn.

00:46 Hey, there's normal changes that come along with aging.

00:49 But then there are other changes that happen because of chronic illness.

00:53 Now, it's really important that you know the difference because we want all our patients no matter what their age are to have the best life possible.

01:03 We want to move them toward the next healthiest step.

01:06 So you need to know what's normal aging and what's related to chronic illness.

01:11 So let's start from the very beginning.

01:14 From the moment we're born, our bodies start this incredible process.

01:19 I mean, it's never ending change and adaptive processes.

01:23 And that's what goes on throughout our entire lives, then you'll see structural changes and functional changes that happens in all of our body systems.

01:32 Those are part of the normal aging process.

01:35 So you see, we start here with a tiny baby inside the womb, then you see as you grow into a child, and into a full grown adult.

01:44 So this is the first step in understanding the difference between age-related changes and chronic illness.

01:51 Because as we grow older, the organ systems find it a little harder to maintain homeostasis, when they experience stress.

01:58 So look at the heart that's able to pump iron.

02:01 That one is young, healthy, fit and very strong.

02:05 But look at the other heart where is telling you, "This is getting harder." That's because as we age, we have less reserve.

02:15 So when we're stressed, or when we're asked to do something like lift something heavy, or walk a long distance, we don't have the reserve to do that as well as we could is when you were younger.

02:26 I know this heart looks like he's really struggling.

02:30 But I don't want you to see that as unhealthy.

02:33 The changes that come along with aging do not equal unhealthy, they're independent of disease.

02:40 So the first important point I want you to think about with Geriatric Nursing is that while being healthy gets a little harder as we grow older, it's not impossible.

02:51 And it's our job as nurses to help all of our clients age successfully.

02:56 So let's start with these two friends.

02:58 You see, we have Jose and Enrique.

03:01 Now I'm going to use them in their progress through life as they age to kind of discuss and help you understand in detail the changes that you see in them and in their organ systems as they age.

03:13 So by the time we end, at the end of these lectures, you'll be able to differentiate between a healthy senior and someone who's experienced changes due to disease processes.

03:24 So there's the young Jose and the aging Jose, the young Enrique and the aging Enrique.

03:33 So when we talk about geriatric care, this generally starts around the age of 65.

03:38 Now, that doesn't mean the morning somebody wakes up on their 65th birthday, they're old automatically.

03:44 We just kind of use that as a marker so you know, what type of patient we're talking about.

03:49 So geriatric care starts around the age of 65.

03:53 So let's lay down what are some of the age-related changes? So when we're talking about these, we mean it's just the process of normal aging, independent from disease.

04:03 So these are going to be the changes in the structure and function of the organs as the person ages.

04:08 So the organs are going to have a little less ability to maintain homeostasis when they're stressed.

04:15 Think back to that heart that we first saw.

04:17 Remember why he was struggling a little bit.

04:19 That's because we stressed the heart.

04:22 Now homeostasis is equal or stability.

04:26 So someone who's aging has a little bit harder time getting back to homeostasis or maintaining homeostasis when they're stressed.