Helping the Elderly Population

Advocacy Project

Proposal Summary

The proposal was to work with Dr. Patrick Khoo of HK Cares, a foundation in Hong Kong, China, where I would be on duty for 5 hours a day for a week. The service I aimed to provide was to visit hospitals in order to care for the elderly population in these facilities. By entertaining them, looking after them, reading to them, and helping them with whatever they needed, my goal was to relieve the disease burden on society and provide the elderly population in hospitals with a greater quality care experience through extra attention on my part.

Summary of What Took Place

First, I wrote a letter explaining the needs of the elderly population and why it was important for members of the community to devote some time to helping them with their needs. I cited a study by Landeiro, Barrows, Musson, Gray and Leal (2017) which focused on the value of reducing loneliness and isolation among the elderly population by visiting them, reading to them, and talking to them. I showed in the letter that this population is often neglected and that by helping them in their needs, one can support the overall community in a positive manner that promotes mindfulness, caring, kindness and other favorable virtues that can help communities develop in a beneficial manner.

Second, I held a convention with my community partner, to advocate for greater community-based care. Involved in the convention were 2 lawmakers, 3 health care professionals, my community partner who is a doctor with HK Cares, and 4 community leaders, all of whom gave talks to the public admitted for free to learn about the ways that they could help the elderly population. The convention was advertised in local community papers and via social media.
Third, I engaged in the project of visiting the elderly population. Every day for one week, I devoted 5 hours per day to visiting the elderly population in hospitals through HK Cares. Specifically, I visited older persons who were suffering from cognitive and physical impairments, as well as functional, behavioral and psychological problems. Between the hours of 4 pm and 9 pm, I was available for their needs.

The specific actions that took place on my part consisted of saying hello to the patients and introducing myself as a volunteer who was interested in visiting with them and spending some time with them. The first thing I would do was explain all the ways I could help if they would like me to visit. I explained that I could get them anything they needed, such as water, a blanket, help with getting out of bed or sitting up, help with finding the nurse on duty. I could read to them from the newspaper or magazines that were available. I could talk with them about their stay or about their life if they would like to tell me about themselves. I could make sure that they had everything they needed to enhance their comfort level and that if they needed anything that they should just ask me.

In total, I visited with 15 different patients over the course of the week. On the first day, I spent one hour apiece with 5 different elderly patients. On the second day, I spent one hour with 5 more patients. And on the third day, I spent one hour with 5 additional patients. Then I repeated the process, re-visiting each of the 15 patients again over the course of the remainder of the week.

For all 15 of the patients, I spent approximately 20 minutes reading to them from material that they wanted to hear read out loud. This ranged from information about their illness that was supplied to them by their care takers at the facility to meditations from religious books that the patients themselves possessed. In some cases, I read from popular magazines and newspapers that were available or that I brought along with me. The patients always enjoyed being read to and thanked me for coming when I was finished reading. For the remainder of the time, I would attend to the patients’ needs by making sure they were comfortable, that they had enough to drink, and that they could get up and move around if so desired. We would also talk: I would first start by talking about myself, where I come from, how old I am, what I was doing there, why I was doing it, and what I wanted to do with my life. Then I would ask the patients questions about their lives to get them to begin talking. In most cases, I learned quite a lot about the patients and saw that they enjoyed sharing this information with me. By the end of the week, I had heard many stories and allowed the patients to experience pleasure by having the opportunity to talk about their lives to someone who wanted to listen. This was a very nice and helpful experience for the elderly patients, as they had a lot of life to look back on and were happy to have an opportunity to look back on it all and talk a little bit about it.

My community partner worked with me on these projects and would sometimes visit different patients while I was visiting others, or we would make a visit at the same time to a single patient. The community partner was helpful at times when the patient would request an item or the nurse; I could stay with the patient while my partner went to retrieve the requested item or nurse.
I promoted the project by writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper and by holding a public convention to raises awareness about the need for community volunteers to help ease the disease burden of the community by visiting the elderly population and making their quality care experiences more satisfactory.

I documented the project by making notes after visiting each patient of who I visited, the time in which I visited them, the services I provided during that visit (i.e., whether I read, what I read, what we discussed, whether I helped them with anything—like sitting up, walking around, using the rest room, getting water or a nurse or extra medication, etc.). By documenting the project in this way I was able to recall what I had done for the patient in my previous visit and I could bring up these items in the next visit by asking the patient to tell me more about something from his or her life connected to what we had talked about previously. Or I could ask about something that had been bothering them to see if I could do anything else to help or if the pain had gone away. These records were helpful in that I was able to show them extra attention simply by recalling what we had done before.
These actions contributed to “Public Value” by helping both the community and the health care facilities to see the benefit of volunteers assisting with the elderly population. As Liu, Lin, Chen and Huang (2007) show, for instance, helping members of the elderly population to reminisce about their lives can be a very supportive and therapeutic way for them to feel comfort and satisfaction with the level of quality care they are receiving. The fact of the matter is that the elderly population in hospitals needs care and attention and that can only come by way of time. By helping these individuals to feel more comfortable, hospital staff can be relieved of some of their burden and the families and loved ones of these individuals can also be relieved of some of the stress they feel by having to take care of them. The public value is seen in the sense that when one gives oneself to the community, the community benefits in myriad ways, most of which may go unnoticed—but all of which are important and impactful.

Overall Impressions

My overall impressions of my event were that the community is definitely interested in helping out in small ways. Some members of the community had ideas of ways in which they could assist with the elderly population. Some of the ideas included bringing a pet to visit with the elderly, playing Nintendo Wii indoor games with the population so that they can get exercise, introducing the elderly patients to the Internet so that they could browse if so inclined, and so on.

My own impressions of my visits with the elderly were that the things that helped the most were my questioning of the patients which sparked interest and showed that I was curious to know more about them. The patients enjoyed talking about their lives and having someone to share their experiences and knowledge with. We could also talk about their illnesses and I was able to give them comfort just by listening and by helping them to sit up or get something that they desired. These small little instances of caring and kindness made the patients feel very positive about their experience and they all expressed gratitude to me for taking time to visit with them. Many of them also expressed an interest in seeing me again.

Things I would do differently would be to bring something that I could leave with the patient so that the patient could be entertained while I was not there—such as music that could be played over a listening device or a puzzle or game or some activity that the patient could indulge in to pass the time while no one was visiting with them. As I did not think of this till the end, I did not have the opportunity to provide this service, but were I to go again, I would try to give each patient I visited something that would help ease their isolation.

What worked mostly was just talking to the patients and entertaining them with stories about myself and listening to them as they talked about themselves. I would make sure to further the discussion by asking questions and getting them to share more about their lives that way. What worked least was reading to the patients: sometimes they would fall asleep or not be interested in the material, so though it helped to pass the time it was not always the most enjoyable aspect of the visit for the patient. Reminiscing was often the most enjoyable aspect.

What I learned from the experience is that the elderly population deserves more attention from the community: this population has served the community for many years and now it is time for the community to give them service back to help show that we are a community that cares about one another. This is what building a strong community is all about.

Relating to the Course

Leadership is about making a difference in one’s community by presenting people with a vision that they can all strive to achieve and then laying out the steps to help achieve it. By advocating for community-based care with my community partner at HK Cares, I was able to demonstrate leadership effectively and show the community what was possible through a little incentive and time given to the elderly population. The study by MacIntyre, Corradetti, Roberts, Browne, Watt and Lane (1999) was helpful in showing me how to go about volunteering to visit with patients and why it could be beneficial to them and the community. I shared this information in my letter to the editor and during the convention as well, so that others who were interested could also benefit from the understanding I achieved in my research.

The skills I used throughout consisted of communication—listening, talking, asking meaningful questions, and sharing valuable information, whether I was writing a letter, hosting a convention, or simply talking to the elderly patients. Communication was key to the success of this project. Planning, coordinating, and collaborating with other stakeholders was also helpful in that I was able to bring many people together for the convention and able to inspire new people in the community to want to engage in community-based care and follow in my footsteps in visiting the elderly patients in Hong Kong.

Reflections on Leadership

What I thought of leadership before this course was that it was more like management and simply involved telling people what to do. What I learned was that leadership is much more than that: it is about getting personally involved in an issue, giving people a vision of how to achieve great things, showing them how to do it and giving an example through one’s own actions of how and why it was good to achieve such a goal.

Working in the community has impacted how I think about leadership by showing me that a community cannot exist without strong leadership. Leaders must be will to work together to achieve a common good, and this means that they have to be willing to give of themselves to others so that this good can be made visible and possible to achieve. This course has impacted my leadership style by helping me to be more of a servant leader in that I want to put the needs of others before my own. This is the kind of giving and care that we need more of in society in order to make society a better place, and I found that I can practice a servant leadership style by simply going out of my way to help others in need and showing other people that they can do the same.

References

Landeiro, F., Barrows, P., Musson, E. N., Gray, A. M., & Leal, J. (2017). Reducing social isolation and loneliness in older people: a systematic review protocol. BMJ Open, 7(5), e013778.

Liu, S. J., Lin, C. J., Chen, Y. M., & Huang, X. Y. (2007). The effects of reminiscence group therapy on self-esteem, depression, loneliness and life satisfaction of elderly people living alone. Mid-Taiwan Journal of Medicine, 12(3), 133-142.

MacIntyre, I., Corradetti, P., Roberts, J., Browne, G., Watt, S., & Lane, A. (1999). Pilot study of a visitor volunteer programme for community elderly people receiving home health care. Health & Social Care in the Community, 7(3), 225-232.