The purpose of this study was to determine whether the life satisfaction of Thai elderly depends on their daily living practice. A comparative design was used to study 73 matched pairs of elderly people who perceive themselves as life satisfied or life dissatisfied. Scores of 85% and above on the life satisfaction instrument were used as a criteria to identify the elderly with life satisfaction. The sample was drawn from elderly clubs in four provinces of the eastern border of Thailand. Data were collected using structured interviews regarding the elderly's daily living practices on physical, mental, social, and economic domains. A two-tailed dependent t test was used to reveal mean scores both overall and for each domain of the daily living practices of the elderly participants. It was found that the life satisfaction group of elderly had significantly higher scores than their dissatisfied counterparts. The findings suggest the importance of Thai elderly's good practice on food habits, regular exercise, seeking knowledge toward health, religious activity involvement, good relationships with others, and well-planned income and expenses resulting in life satisfaction. Thus, nurses can promote life satisfaction of Thai elderly by motivating these factors that are generally uncommon practices in the Thai elderly culture. Future studies using a longitudinal quasi-experimental design to employ these positive daily living practice to promote life satisfaction of the life dissatisfied elderly is recommended.

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Background: Health-Related Quality Of Life (HRQOL) is an important consideration for persons with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). This convergent parallel mixed-methods study aimed to examine the factors predicting HRQOL and to explore a comprehensive in-depth understanding of the factors associated with HRQOL in persons with COPD. Methods: For the quantitative arm, simple random sampling consisted of 240 persons with COPD in Public Health Region 4, Thailand and self-reported questionnaires were employed and analyzed by using SPSS version 22.0 software. For the qualitative arm, purposive sampling consisted of 30 participants that were interviewed and the transcripts analyzed using content analysis. Subsequently, a side-by-side joint display table was used to merge the data. Results: Social support was the strongest predictor of HRQOL, followed by nutritional status, pulmonary function, and functional performance with R2 = 0.801, p = 0.00. The participants perceived that social support can create encouragement, build convenience, and offer good recommendations. They also reported that the effects of COPD included poor nutritional status, deteriorating lung function, and activity limitations resulting in inadequate self-care in people living with COPD. Although age and gender were not found to be significant predictors of HRQOL, the participants perceived that differences in age and gender did not predict the prognosis of the disease. Conclusion: Four factors were seen to be significant predictors of HRQOL and potential explanations for the identification of the factors predicting HRQOL. Nurses and healthcare teams can modify the predicting factors and implement appropriate care leading to increased HRQOL in persons with COPD.

The purpose of this article was to describe, monitor and evaluate the Thai-Lao Collaborating Nursing Manpower Development Project using Stufflebeam's Context Input Process Product model. The study found that the project had great success in personnel development according to the six activities of the project. It helped develop two nurses with Masters degrees, 24 senior nurses and 283 diploma and auxiliary nurses. There were visible changes in the discipline and in terms of nursing care, nursing process was utilized. The Lao nursing system was developed to the point where white uniforms were used as the symbol of nurses who previously went unrecognized. There was a change in the structure of nursing organization. Moreover, nursing activities moved towards the goal of health promotion and prevention. The study recommended that a periodic supervisory activity be implemented to enhance the training of trainers. In addition, a 2-year continuation program for Bachelor degrees in nursing should be developed initially in Laos, then a 4-year program should be developed. The nursing education program for Masters degrees should initially be obtained through neighboring countries.

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