Analysis of Researches on Nursing Intervention for Elderly Health Promotion from 1994 to 2004

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to analyse researches on nursing intervention for elderly health promotion. METHOD: A literature review of 38 researches was carried out using guidelines developed by the present researchers. RESULT: The research papers studied in this research were theses written for doctoral or master's degree and published between 1994 to 2004. These researches applied nursing intervention for health promotion of elders and used experimental study design. The average period of nursing intervention was about 9 weeks and the average frequency was three times per week. As for major characteristics of subject groups, most of them were over 65 years old (76.3%) and resided in community (65.8%), and each group consisted of 10 to 29 elders. The dependent variables used in these studies included physiological variables (blood pressure, blood cholesterol level, pulmonary function, fasting blood sugar, blood cortisol level, body mass etc.), psychologic variables (depression, quality of life, life satisfaction, loneliness, anxiety etc.), cognitive variables (perceived benefits, perceived barriers, self-efficacy, self-concept, subjective health status etc.), activities of daily livings, health promotion behavior, pain, risks of fall, and variables related to Trans Theoretical Model. The majority of these studies (78.9%) applied exercise programs for health promotion including exercise motivating programs (15.8%). CONCLUSION: We suggest that more various nursing interventions must be applied to promote elders' health and to take care of their chronic diseases.