Recommendations for healthy aging as documented by health professionals: a summative content analysis of health records

Abstract

Aim: To identify what type of recommendations were recorded in older adults’ health records by health professionals during preventive home visits. Background: To promote health and prevent ill health, health professionals can give support and recommendations to older adults. The preventive home visit for older adults is one example of an intervention where health professionals such as nurses, social workers, and assistant nurses can give recommendations. By exploring what recommendations are recorded and within what areas, we can also gain knowledge about areas where provision of recommendations seems lacking. This knowledge would provide health professionals with guidance in their counseling with the older adult. Methods: Records from preventive home visits (n = 596; mean age 78.71) were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. Findings: The most frequently recorded recommendations were related to physical or mental illness, falls, and then nutrition. The results showed that recommendations could be sorted into ten sub-categories related to physical or mental illness, falls, nutrition, physical activity, preparation for the future, social participation, finances, getting help from others, municipal services, and security at home. These ten sub-categories were classified into the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health categories body functions & structure (including one sub-category), activity (including four sub-categories), participation (including three sub-categories), and environmental factors (including two sub-categories). From the results, we could conclude that the major focus was on risk prevention and less focus was on health promotion. Thus, the visitor’s recommendations most likely mirror the older adult’s explicit needs ‘here and now’ to a great extent. However, health visitors also need to focus on intrinsic capacities to promote health. Besides recommendations relating to the person’s intrinsic capacities, environmental aspects should be focused upon, to improve healthy aging.