Healthcare Assignment: Barriers for Older People on Accessing Health & Social Care Services
Question
Task: This healthcare assignment need to debate the barriers faced by older people to access health and social services (factors like language, discrimination, low income, mental health issue, loneliness, lack of energy and mobility, low family support).
Answer
Introduction
As opined by England, (2021) with regards to present case scenario of healthcare assignment, the Government of the United Kingdom has decided to provide government sponsorship universal health and social care to a wide region of people, and this social service is termed national healthcare service or NHS. This NHS consists of a publicly funded health and social care system all over the United Kingdom where England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland play important roles in this participation. Healthcare social care service is considered as one of the must-do responsibilities of a country’s public sector commission where they take care of old age, people who have disabilities, and mental illness. In this report among all of these the heat and social care provided by the country’s government, service provided to older people has been taken under consideration where the corresponding barriers of assessing these health and social care services have been discussed.
Main body discussion
Barriers faced by old age people in the accessibility of health and social care services
As per the current year analysis Right to health of older people, (2021), the government of the UK targeted to provide their health and social care to almost 58 million people where the health and social care coverage is considered to be free for the elderly. NHS continues their health care service package for the elderly of the country where they get helped with direct or indirect health care facilities.it has been identified that health and social care services provided to older people were not adequate for the targeted people where the old age people face a number of issues in the case of service accessibility. The accessibility issues have been pointed out in the following.
Differences in language: as opined by Venkatesan, (2021) language barriers is considered the most significant barrier in the accessibility of health and social care services as it leads to inefficient communication between the patient and healthcare professionals. Differences in the use of language also lead to uncertainty, hurdles, and stress which affect the implementation of cultural preservation and old age-cantered care. Barriers to language are the most common barrier which causes the existence of misinterpretation and misunderstanding between people. It has been obtained that most of the health care providers under the NHS specialized in English and due to less knowledge of speaking in English old people face problems discussing their health issues with the providers and that leads to ranging gaps between the actual healthcares with the targeted health care services.
Existence of discrimination:
Discrimination is considered as one of the highlighted issues in this generation where a number of people are unable to access equal service from the health and social care sector. Discrimination is based on immigration, generation, race or ethnicity, religion or other factors.it has been obtained that old age people face this barrier in accessing the health and social care services due to the existing discrimination in generation and their inability to access modern technology. As per the analysis Wyman et al., (2018, p. 201), direct discrimination happened to take place where elderly people are excluded deliberately from the accessibility of health and social care services due to their age gap. For example, helping international publications mentioned that old people are being told of not getting service from the department as they become less interested in providing ambulance services at their home. The World Health Organization stated that the life-course approach for the aged people considering their age, illness, and disability which are not inevitable but is considered as a result of choices or living conditions they made in their life span.
Low income: considering the recent country analysis elderly people with low income faces barriers inappropriate accessibility of health and social care where poor functional capability, low physical activities and poor psychological wellness are taken into account. Low income among old age people is found as twice as other residents due to several of income issues and they report that due to their low financial stability public sector health and social care department also not concerning with their service accessibility. With low income and save these people could not book their preferred room in hospitals and were also not able to get equal service quality like high-income personnel.
Issues of Mental health: As per the report of WHO (Healthaffairs.org. 2021), the world population has been aging rapidly and in the year between 2015-2016 the section of the world's population over the 60 years has doubled from 12%-22%. Mental and neurological disorders have been found mostly among old age people as they have less amount of work to do in their daily life and miserably need to spend their retirement life all alone. Sometimes with these issues in mental health old age, people are not ready to get their necessary diagnosis and also disagree to get their medicines and foods. This creates problems for the allocated health and social care providers to make proper service and treatment for the elderly. According to the report Who.int. (2021), more than 20% of people more than 60 years old suffer from serious neurological or mental illnesses. The most common illness in their age is either depression or dementia which has an impact on over 5%- 7% population over the world, almost 3.8% of old people facing this barrier due to their issue of anxiety. Mental illnesses at this age make health care professionals reluctant to provide them with required health care services.
The loneliness of the old age people:
Loneliness is considered the worst issue for old age people which increases the risk of mortality and also creates inevitable depression for the long term. Where cognitive decline, dementia, high blood pressure, high sugar, and other conditions need to be taken into account by the health care service providers. Loneliness makes old age people scared and depressed to access the health and social care provided by the government. It has been identified that due to loneliness they become habituated to less interaction with people also with the doctors or other health care providers and in this case, it increases the chance of heart failure or stroke to almost 30% as compared to the general scenario.
Lack of energy and lack of mobility:
Aging also impacts the reduction of energy which makes old people unable to move from one place to another easily and in this case they are reluctant to go to availing their health care in any health care service department. As per the report Shlisky et al., (2017, p. 17), The chronic disease reduces the energy involved in several tasks at the age of more than 60 and this diminishes the quality of life span and also increases the healthcare service cost. Due To several health problems like hypertension, arthritis, hearing disability, diabetes, and defective vision impact in reducing their mobility. The problems like Arthritis or other relevance reduce the impairment to stand in one place and cover more distances. For instance, it creates a barrier to get sufficient health care services. It has been identified that old age people experience fatigue which is an effect of growing age and this fatigue creates barriers in accessing health care services due to lack of chance in physical activities as compared to before. Lack of exercise, low food quality habits, lack of protein and vitamin intake, smoking are the reasons which reduce old age energy and also cause fatigue. It has been obtained that Stark et al., (2019, p. 15), Though the UK government initiated various health care programs especially for old people, their inefficiency in availing the health care facilities can be considered as one of the biggest barriers in the modern scenario.
Low support from their families:
According to the viewpoint of Elsayedet al., (2019, p. 40), as people age, people need more support and assistance from their family members. Support from children or other family members may improve the health and mental condition of the elderly and also extend their life spans without any serious health hazards. However, there are various issues that have been found in case of support from old age family members. Increasing negligence, increasing irrational and inhuman Behaviour, living alone, living in vulnerable conditions are some of the major factors which make older people more vulnerable and more ill as per their age. It has been identified most of the health and social care department contacts with the young generation of the older people's family and due to their negligence towards the elderly, they can't reach the needy people and provide sufficient health care treatment.
Conclusion
At the end of the report, it can be concluded that health and social care for all age groups are necessary. There are various reasons and barriers exist for which the old age people couldn’t get the proper access to the health and social care sector of the country. Though the government took the various intense decision to provide health and social care to each and every old age there are some of the barriers for which they are unable to reach needy people.
References
Elsayed, E.B.M., El-Etreby, R.R. and Ibrahim, A.A.W., 2019. Relationship between social support, loneliness, and depression among elderly people. International Journal of Nursing Didactics, 9(01), pp.39-47.
England, N., 2021. NHS England » Improving care for older people. [online] England.nhs.uk. Available at:
Healthaffairs.org. 2021. Care Management For Older Adults: The Roles Of Nurses, Social Workers, And Physicians | Health Affairs Journal. [online] Available at:
Right to Health of Older People, 2021. Right to health of older people. [online] Available at:
Shlisky, J., Bloom, D.E., Beaudreault, A.R., Tucker, K.L., Keller, H.H., Freund-Levi, Y., Fielding, R.A., Cheng, F.W., Jensen, G.L., Wu, D. and Meydani, S.N., 2017.Healthcare assignment Nutritional considerations for healthy aging and reduction in age-related chronic disease. Advances in nutrition, 8(1), p.17.
Stark, Z., Dolman, L., Manolio, T.A., Ozenberger, B., Hill, S.L., Caulfied, M.J., Levy, Y., Glazer, D., Wilson, J., Lawler, M. and Boughtwood, T., 2019. Integrating genomics into healthcare: a global responsibility. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 104(1), pp.13-20.
Venkatesan, T., 2021. Deconstructing language barriers in healthcare: where are we going wrong?.
Who.int. 2021. Mental health of older adults. [online] Available at:
Wyman, M.F., Shiovitz-Ezra, S. and Bengel, J., 2018. Ageism in the health care system: Providers, patients, and systems. In Contemporary perspectives on ageism (pp. 193-212). Springer, Cham.
