Do Community Support Groups Stand A Chance In Providing Health Care To The Aged?
INTRODUCTION
This is a medical research that will be aimed at bringing to light the challenges that the elderly have in the local Australian communities and in the healthy facilities. The focus regions would be the remote South Eastern Coastal regions of Australia believed to be flocked with the highest number of aged people of above 65 years which fits exactly in the margin of research that will be used for the study.
The number of helping options they can go for would be established. It will mainly focus on the existing support groups or the alleged community support groups to highlight what they are actually involved with/in. For the basics of the research a group has been identified that will help in the facilitation of this work, this would involve a 45 member crew who would be responsible for seeing through of the entire specified period of 11 months.
Cost has been estimated for equipment required to collect data with which will include audio recorders, video cameras, questionnaires, measurement equipment that involve sophisticated to low end. Methods that will be used to collect data with will be, interviews, filling in of questionnaires, observation and lab tests among others if need arises.
Target group of the research will be the residents of a vast area on the entire South Eastern Coast of Australia. The residents will involve only members of the communities as the participants and will be looking forward to target the 60+ year olds, given the life expectance isn’t very high in Australia (National Census Board, 2011) the research team as decide to work towards dealing within this margin of age to increase the cover of the research.
The research will follow up-to-date data analysis methods such as the computational, quantitative, triangulation, specification research and elimination method where deducing of facts is dependent on a number of non-stable variants. Data collection and keeping will be the duty of a designated data analyst. Within the margin of the research work it will be highlighted that coordination and consultation would be a way through which accuracy will be achieved in this study.
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
Research work in this case will be involving the finding of elderly residential majority regions of Australia, their situations in terms of health, social and emotional needs and assessing if they have a defined order from where to get help from. Finding the position of the elderly women and men in the society and determining the majority in this case, what kind of sufferings they go through? What type of disease they seem to have in common? What efforts have been put to arrest some of these diseases? Who among the available community support groups if any is much more active to providing health care for the aged? Who formed and funds the community support groups? Why the communities required the community support groups while there is a government in place?
The study will be aimed at negotiating a program with the residents and the aged (especially the sick) to join some of the community based support groups if there are any reliable ones, instances of laxity by the members of support groups will be outlined and action against those be sought in cases where some of the groups are funded by international groups and they are not doing the work suggested in the contracts. Aiming at pointing out the differences between a community support group and a generic community support group, to identify how they are related with the elderly and how they are helping solve the problems of the elderly. By the time the research work a list of factors would be outlined like the amount of medication they require, what type of professional care they require, what happens to the community support group when there are casualties needing special care and what help they turn to in such cases.
BACKGROUND
This research will be contracted by a team of 45 members working within the South Eastern Coast of Australia, 25Km radius range from the coast of Tasman Sea (World Map, Oxford, 5th edition), the team comprises of 35 year olds and below to the minimum of 23 years. 25 of the members are females, 5 among the male members are engineers majoring in mechanical and electrical, 15 of the total team members are medical nurses and researchers in both medicine and Polypharmacy locally and internationally. The remaining 25 members fit into categories of drivers, nutritionists, nurses, data analysts, geographical directors and event organizers. The team once in the field they’ll be conducting brief gatherings (25-40 minutes) every morning to actualize themselves with the events of the day and a brief revision of the previous work. The schedule as of the entire time (11 months) will be starting 8:30 am (CAT) everyday and finishing 7 hours after the start, this would be aimed to maximizing the time we have with the residents in terms that are convenient for their presence and the time for patient care.
To be close to the participants the research team is keen on patient status and thus it has embarked in the setting up of a camp just few minutes from most of the participants’ residential area, this can be substituted with using rental houses but there is a general keenness with expenditure and resources usage are utility form factors requiring special preplanning. Minimization of overflow of expenditure would transfer the surplus resource to tine needs of special-case patients.
SIGNIFICANCE:
Significance of the study would be to give a detailed account of the categories of community support groups, the purpose they serve besides the health and the support for needs of the people and the development of the health concerns they are faced with in their line of work. This research will be targeting to establish if the community support groups are different from those generic in nature, the way they serve the community if their base interests are the same as those of the community itself. Aiming at finding out if the necessity of existence of these community support group pointing out whether the situation will improve by our research. If there will be positive implication of our study there will be a profiling as to how well they already are and how they intend to improve with assistance from the research personalities and the findings. (Behling, 1984)
The question of specialized medical intervention would be addressed by looking into the type of cases their conditions, relates cases and the future reoccurrence of the same, it would be advisable to locate means of minimizing the adversity of some of the conditions we will be dealing with and defining the way through these. If the issue of medical personnel happens to be one of the reasons we will be aiming to setting up a channel of consultation ad options that deal with the cases presenting themselves.
Since there will be medication and specialized treatment it should be noted if the intervention has helped in that there will be ‘grace period’ to administer the rate of response to medication of the residents. Te major implications like coming to acknowledging the residents of how to form and administer community support group to run home run nursing facilities, old age tolerance and acceptance to the old and how to deal with sick cases as the rate of alertness dims with age.
DESCRIPTION
Hospital records: To live by the criteria of the research it will be required that a form of undertaking the research will be followed and by determining what methods the residents are familiar with in term of literacy. From the local and nearby hospitals we will be checking into hospital records and books in search for numbers that will be used for estimations. Some of the records to target will be the outpatient and inpatient in terms of age, diagnosis, frequency of visits of similar cases and the margins of numbers of the cases within a specified period of time.
Library books: Information concerning the topography, demography, distribution of resources and the history of the area would be sort out, this will be enable the team to know the areas to get what type of data, what is related to the kind of cases they are witnesses, cases of formulating mathematical formulae would be expected and to get some of the basics of the idea would be found in books in that we haven’t included mathematical professors or geniuses. Prefeasibility study of some other branches of the entire research could be relying on information in books, some data like how many survivors of a certain ailment would be necessary in determining the expected outcomes of treatments and the chances of survival. (Ronald, 2008)
Legal documents: To the area administration would be sought to help in identifying how many registered community support groups there are and how many still update their licenses of operation, some of this data will be the key to go by when determining life spans of some of the community support groups in that the records would show how long past groups lived for.
Interviews: This will be conducted by everyone in one stage or another of the study given that the group is well conversant with the guidelines of the study. Interviewees will be selected within the basis allowing the following forms of interviews: Face-to-face, on phone, through social networks, through text messages and through sign language with a professional understanding the dynamics of the sign language.
Observation: This method will be useful in cases that require the noting of changes in how people are reacting to medication or the number of units of scale a group member is moving or handling per specific time. Whilst should the unquantifiable units be required observation method will fit in to give a range of estimates and determine a bottom-line variable once done entering the data inputs. To in performing along term observation use of devices would be appropriate in capturing the whole idea for viewing and reviewing. By the use of this method, a researcher will be able to draw some facts that would take lengthy period of time, this as well would be appropriate in estimation of data such as the pints of medication a group of people would need at a single time, then the amount on the total dosages.
METHODOLGY
For data gathering and extraction the research team will be guided mostly by interpretive perspective. This focuses mostly in interpreting meanings and perspective of the members of the culture and the negotiation of the meanings (Grigoryev, 2001). Achieving this will require a communication specialist to interpret some the information derived from the interviewees with the consideration of culture and the way of life of these people to gaze at meanings of whatever information they offer to give.
Financial persuasion: when members whom you have contacted to hold interviews are not willing to show up or give sufficient, financial persuasion could work for them in that they would require a token of encouragement especially when dealing with sensitive matter. Some members are naturally unsupportive and gathering information from them requires more that verbal persuasion, although quite like trickery the research success depends on actual information and where the source isn’t cooperative enough a little of unconventional method is required. The target group for this kind of approach isn’t just anybody but a selected few who in return have to give assurance of keeping the encounter out of the scenes.
We will seek the guidance of a librarian in acquiring information that will be specific to the task and that can be relied on, the help of the librarian would be in terms of how much does he/she know about the subject matter before hand and how informed about related issues is he/she? When it comes to recommending books he/she will have to be specific and to the point in that the library work won’t be the entire of the team’s place of gathering the information. Seeking assistance of other librarians even if they will be out of their work stations will be an added advantage we will need to accomplish. As it is known that it’s no surprise failing to get all the information you need in one library, the current librarian will need to be persuaded in recommending some of the books that we can look at from other libraries so as to save time when moving to the mentioned library.
Hospital matters are very sensitive and most of the data required in our research as in the case of investigating the spread of diseases and the king of diseases most patients are diagnosed with, files and other personal information would be a task to get through, however, the research team has a strategy to approach that, it will be to approach some of the management staff with a proposal of shared interests (Rawson, 1999) and in others unconventional methods can be applied in pressuring some of the staff in cases where a manager gave consent but the junior staff can’t take private information of a client or former client to the open. This would involve time and rescheduling approaches by different members of the team some posing as medical investigators, some as critically ill patients (Christopher, 2003) all to get an up-close to a chance of being talked to and being provided with the information required out of them.
Getting data from observing activity over a long period of time (11 months) could be quite tiring, to do this and keep the data safe and consistent, there will be a an observation sub group that will be doing the recording of what they find and this will be presented in an orderly manner to provide a flow which most of this data will be taken into consideration to create graphs and charts that illustrate the response of a patient to medicine, it will also be required to show how active the members of the support group would be, sometimes interviews could be held in enclosed private chambers but for the sake of protecting the participant a separate observing team would be deployed to assess the methods applied by interviewers, this will be to ensure zero tolerance of participant intimidation, in place where some mental patients are involved, the use of video cameras would be useful to monitor the activities and deduce the factor of medication response. There are other terms when the use of CCTV cameras will be applicable like when assessing the sleeping habits of a patients, the number of times he/she wakes up, the amount of time one takes to sleep after medication.
HARDSHIPS OF THE RESEARCH
Uncooperative participant, non-focused team members, mechanical delays/break downs of machines, storms in fields, friction with authority, electrical overages and shortages, getting stranded, lack of coordination among members of the team.
When it comes to third parties in a research we will not be intimidated by the laxity of a participant or being turned down by a participant at the last minute, to curb this we will identify in time a number of participants playing the same role, so in case one or two do not show up or refuse to cooperate the rest can be available and thus removing the threat of stand off in the research activities. In terms of the reliability of such factors like being on time and still being able to be counted on, the criteria of selection of participants will be addressed by the state of their mental stability, records of self harm, history of suicidal attempts, police records on crime, as we consider the people to interview we have considered who to exclude form being a participant because the accuracy of the research is a key point of keen interest. In terms of how much a participant is willing to participate will be a factor of considering variable of quantity and restrictions. If a participant will be willing to give a certain amount of information under a level of restriction then consent will be sought to allow the participation and enter the deal that he/she requests, otherwise if the equilibrium of served interest isn’t definitive, then exclusion would be adopted.
The discipline of the team members will be a top priority when dealing with the public (community support groups, by standers, participants and our supervisors); this then will determine the number and the selection of team members when assigning those activities to undertake, the discipline of the team will be the basis of focus to seeing the study a success.
Mechanical and electrical devices have some tendency to fail when subjected to some conditions, cars fail to start right way when it has been cold, electricity tend to fail when it’s wind dependant and there isn’t enough wind to drive turbines, to deal with the mechanical problems such as flat tires and defective exhaust systems in our team there comprises a number of engineers majoring in the exact fields as mentioned.
Among the most ridiculous of problem is getting stranded when a task, it is very likely that members have to travel alone or groups of few people, this in return could lead to losing the sense of co-ordinates hence getting one lost. To address this, every member will be equipped with a detailed map of the area within which operations will be taking place. (Lindlof, 2002)
Nature cannot be negotiated with and since most of the problems have solutions to there are forms of natural conditions that would require a stand off from the research. Storms, torrential rains and wild fires are some of which would lead to abortion or stand off to the research.
CONCLUSION
Reason for this research will be to correlate community support group and the actual community that requires that support. The aim will be to make the home nursing facilities dependable in cases of emergencies. The research team is ready and fully organized to achieve the basic goal of finding out whether community support groups do support the aged lot.
