Analysis of elderly population living in nursing homes in relation with their independence in dayling living

Abstract

The increasing number of elderly people who live in nursing homes drove us to consider the possibility of a particular form of growing old in these institutions. Analyzing the results obtained with a functional scale to assess the activities of daily living (A.D.L.), allowed us to know the functional abilities of this elderly population, the community dwellers and the nursing homes residents. The dependency profile for A.D.L. was obtained for each group, and also the correlation coeficients. We obtained the the regresion lines to interpret and discuss graphic and statistically the apparently low functional capacity of nursing homes residents. We conclude that the dependency is high when increasing the age, being higher in the females than in the males. The health status and type of residency were correlated with lower dependency. And even being lower the number of nursing home residents than the community dwellers, when these are healthy, the dependency is higher in the nursing home residents, than in the community dwellers. We could not observe any statistical correlation with the previous kind of job. KEY WORDS: Aged. Nursing homes. Activities of daily living. Questionnaires.