Multi-professional and multi-dimensional group education – a key to action in elderly persons

Abstract

Purpose: This study was intended to evaluate a multi-professional health-promoting and disease-preventive intervention organized as multi-professional senior group meetings, which addressed home-dwelling, independently living, cognitively intact elderly persons (80±), by exploring the participants’ experiences of the intervention. Method: The focus group methodology was used to interview a total of 20 participants. The informants had participated in four multi-professional senior group meetings at which information about the ageing process and preventive strategies for enhancing health were discussed. Results: The overall finding was that the elderly persons involved in the intervention lived in the present, but that the supportive environment together with learning a preventive approach contributed to the participants’ experiencing the senior meetings as a key to action. Conclusions: Elderly persons who are independent may have difficulty accepting information about preventing risks to health. However, group education with a multi-professional approach may be a successful model for achieving an exchange of knowledge, which may possibly empower the participants, give them role models, the opportunity to learn from each other and a sense of sharing problems with people in similar circumstances.

Implications for Rehabilitation

• Since elderly persons these days are expected to live beyond their 80 s, there is still time for interventions aimed at health promotion and disease prevention to have an effect on functional status and the quality of life of their remaining years.

• Elderly persons who are independent may have difficulty accepting information about preventing risks to health.

• Multi-professional health promoting and disease-preventive senior meetings could motivate elderly persons to act on behalf of their own health.

• Multi-professional collaboration combined with the group model made the participants in our study experience the senior meeting as a key to action.

Keywords::

• Elderly persons
• health promotion
• disease prevention
• group education
• multi-professional

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the participants in the study for sharing their experiences and to the staff at “Livslots för seniorer”, especially to Lena Rudholm for her valuable help with the interviews.

Author contributions

LB and SDI were responsible for the study design. LB collected the data and was the primary author of the paper. LB and SDI performed the data analysis. LZ, AD and KF participated in the research design and contributed to writing and reviewing the manuscript.

Declaration of Interest: The study was financed by grants from Vårdalinstitutet, the Swedish Institute for Health Sciences.