Need ideas for community senior citizen teaching project...Please!

Nikki422 · Mar 9, 2007

This may sound a little bit odd..but..constipation. I had to teach five senior citizens about it during my community health clinical. We were assigned topics and at first I was really dreading it, but..in reality..it went REALLY well. I focused it primarily around diet options, ie lots of water, fiber etc..I typed up some recipies, made a shopping list.I also gave some background info on it, what actually classifies as being constipated, reasons (medications, inactivity, poor diet etc.)..it was actually pretty fun, they were very receptive and even asked questions. The fact is, several senior citizens suffer from it and they are just too embarassed to admit it or tell their healthcare team..

Good luck!

Pattiecake · Mar 9, 2007

How about the signs and symptoms of angina. Easy to teach, lots to say, and many seniors have no clue about the symptoms

nj1grlcrus · Mar 9, 2007

My recent interest is in osteoporosis. I guess it hits women harder, but it might be an idea, I do think the constipation one is better, but if you are feeling shy...also diabetes is rampant these days. Fluids are good, too.

cmullerRN · Mar 10, 2007

Thanks so much for the ideas. I am definitely not shy, so I'll run it by the other 3 in my group. I love that you did recipes and stuff. That's the one thing that our instructor told us...they LOVE "stuff"...hand out, etc.

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Mar 10, 2007

i was going to suggest that you go to the site of the aarp and see what kinds of articles and information they have listed there. might give you some ideas. they just published the results of a big study they did on the rising costs of medications early this week since the inception of medicare part d. they named names with adventis and boehringer ingleheim being at the top of the list because they have raised the average annual price of their pharmaceutical products by more than four times the rate of general inflation in 2006. why is this happening if medicare is now reimbursing the cost of drugs? ambien and flomax were the two drugs that had the highest price increases in 2006, 14.5% and 13.4% respectively. aarp has also been a big driving force (no pun intended) behind classes to teach the elderly how to be safer drivers as well as an advocate for drivers licenses not to be taken away from the aged population. if you have satellite radio you might want to tune in to one of the stations for seniors to see what kind of topics they are discussing that are of interest to this population. two common problems that elderly face that medicare doesn't help them with costwise are their hearing and sight. medicare will pay for the cost of evaluation and medical services, but not for the hearing aids and glasses.

don't know if you'll find anything of interest on this geriatric website for professionals, but i'll post it for you:

http://www.medicine.uiowa.edu/igec/index.html