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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Dignity
— the voice older people | | Author(s) | Tony Bayer, Win Tadd, Stefan Krajcik |
| Journal title | Quality in Ageing, vol 6, no 1, June 2005 |
| Pages | pp 22-29 (Dignity and older Europeans, part 1) |
| Source | http://www.pavpub.com |
| Keywords | Health services ; Services ; Management [care] ; Rights [elderly] ; Attitudes to the old of general public ; Quality of life ; Qualitative Studies ; Europe. |
| Annotation | Findings are reported of 89 focus groups and 18 individual interviews (involving 391 older people in 6 European countries) that were held to explore how older people view human dignity in their lives. Participants were aged 60+ (25% were aged 80+) and were from a range of educational, social and economic backgrounds. 72% were women, and 17% were living in residential or nursing homes. There was substantial agreement about the meaning and experience of dignity in older people's everyday lives. It was seen as a highly relevant and important concept, enhancing self-esteem, self-worth and well-being. Three major themes were identified: respect and recognition; participation and involvement; and dignity in care. The theoretical model of human dignity developed in the project was reflected in many of the findings from the empirical data. Of particular importance and relevance was the notion of "dignity and personal identity", not least because it is perhaps most vulnerable to the actions of others. Menschenwûrde (expressed as the innate dignity of human beings) was also important. For dignity of older people to be enhanced, communication issues, privacy, personal identity and feelings of vulnerability need to be addressed. Education of all professionals should pay attention to practices that enhance or detract from the experience of dignity. Policies and standards need to go beyond the merely mechanistic and easily quantifiable, to identify meaningful qualitative indicators of dignity in care. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-050714213 A |
| Classmark | L: I: QA: IKR: TOB: F:59: 3DP: 74 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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