Paper Example on Geriatric Rehabilitation

Introduction

Geriatric rehabilitation is defined as therapeutic and diagnostic interventions whose objective is to restore the functional capacity or strengthen useful residual ability in senior patients with disabling impairments. Most patients who are 75 years and above indicate G.R., but in some instances, younger seniors can have frail and multiple comorbidities related to intercurrent diseases and minimal exercise tolerance (Christiana Stevens et al., 2014). As the human body ages, it faces several emotional and physical changes that can affect the wellbeing and functions of the individual significantly. The physiological changes take place with time in all body organs such that it can result in organ failure or malfunctions. This group of patients is characterized by several features such as cardiac output declines, increase in blood pressure, or development of arteriosclerosis.

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Health Conditions

In some patients, the patients may indicate impaired gaseous exchange in their lungs, reduced vital capacity, and slower expiratory flow rates. Although the serum creatinine levels stay constant in old age, there are indications of a decrease in creatine because of health conditions that might affect its production. The functional changes among these patients are related to the affected motility patterns in their gastrointestinal systems, hepatic drug metabolism, and atrophic gastritis. Also, the continual increase in blood glucose is familiar with old age on a multifactorial ground, while osteoporosis becomes common because of the decline of bone masses.

Additionally, the epidermis associated with variations in skin elastin and collagen makes the skin lose its tone and elasticity; thus, it makes the skin waste and body mass decrease with age primarily because of muscle cell atrophy. Degenerative variations in joints is another change associated with old age. In this case, the patients experience difficult locomotion due to loss of muscle mass and cartilages around the joints.

Quality of Care

The quality of care for this patient group is not only due to body changes associated with old age but also with chronic diseases such as stroke, cardiovascular conditions, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, among other illnesses. These aspects change prompt, practical implications for their clinical care that puts their physiological, emotional, and social needs to improve their quality of life. The type of care should consider the altered metabolism and changes in response associated with different drugs and drug dosages. There is a need for establishing preventive programs of exercise and diet to reverse or delay some of these changes.

A report by WHO outlines that most infections associated with healthcare settings affect hundreds of millions of patients around the globe annually. These infections have resulted in prolonged hospital stays, serious illnesses, induced long-term disabilities, and a high treatment cost to the patients and their families. Furthermore, these infections have contributed to an immense additional financial constraint on the healthcare system, often resulting in death. The conditions are caused by several factors related to care, system, and human behavior activated by political, education, and economic constraints on systems and countries. Luckily most of these infections are preventable.

Hand hygiene is the main measure that can minimize infections, which seems like a simple action, but lack of compliance among the healthcare has resulted in being problematic to the masses, more so the older patients. This situation has prompted research and promotional strategies to be put in place to develop new approaches to make massive and effective improvement.

Medical Care Providers

It has been reported that medical care providers are consistently compliant in hand hygiene, more so among the physicians. Several factors influence their hand hygiene behavior, such as beliefs, workload, access to hygiene products, and specialty. Several strategies have been evaluated in an attempt to improve hygiene. These attempts include education, peer mentorship, access to products, incentives, and online modules. However, the blueprint for accomplishment remains indefinable. This situation has instigated public pressure to demonstrate compliance with the best activities for controlling infections. The hospitals and other healthcare facilities are under pressure to enhance resident engagements in developing institutional safety and quality care goals.

Considering the wide gap between ideal behavior and current practices, as well as the objectivity and ease of measurement, hand Hygiene remains a natural avenue for improvement and engagement. Geriatric rehabilitation specialist should incorporate an understanding of the unique needs of older patients. The engagement should include tailoring geriatric rehabilitation programs for patients with multiple health issues ranging from cognitive, physical, and functional requirements. The sensitivity of the type of care these patient group needs calls for different consciousness in terms of hand hygiene, considering that these patients health is critical at their age. To enhance this quality of care, there is a need for efficient leadership styles that can ensure that medical practitioners adhere to proper hand hygiene when caring for these patients. These leadership styles include transformational, Autocratic, laissez-Faire, participative, among others. This paper intends to explore the leadership styles and how they influence hand hygiene compliance among the staff in a geriatric rehabilitation hospital setting.

Problem Statement

Healthcare-associated infections are a significant issue in threatening patient safety. Its prevention should be perceived as the priority for institutions and settings committed to making sure that healthcare is safer. The impact of these infections has significant results that have been creating a burden on healthcare workers, hospitals, government, patients, and their families in different dimensions. These dimensions include the more prolonged admissions, long-term disabilities, financial obligations, increased death rates, excessive microorganism resistance, high cost of healthcare services, and emotional depression for the patients and their family members. The risk of getting these infections depends on aspects associated with infectious agents such as virulence, antimicrobial resistance, or the ability to overcome the environment.

Also, they are dependent on the host factors such as advanced age, immunosuppression, malnutrition, and underlying diseases, of the patients. The environment is also a determinant factor because treatment interventions take place in these areas; they include the ICUs, antimicrobial therapy, among others. As much as the risk of getting HCAI is global and permeates all hospitals and facilities worldwide, the global burden is well perceived because of the difficulties in gathering reliable diagnostic data. This problem is common in geriatric rehabilitation because of the complexity and inadequate uniformity in criteria the systems employ to diagnose HCAI. Its surveillance system is virtually nonexistent in several countries.

This study will explore the leadership style's role in influencing hand hygiene among healthcare workers attending geriatric rehabilitation settings. Under these circumstances, several bacterial and viral HCAI is highly transmitted to these patients because they are more prone to pathogens due to their weakened immune systems. Thus, the burden caused by this infection seems to be several times higher in senior patients with advanced age compared to younger, energetic patients, more so because patients with advanced ages have other underlying health conditions that make them vulnerable. Also, the low compliance tendency among health workers requires leaders' attention to ensure that the main proper hand hygiene to protect patients from HCAI and its burden. The intended leadership styles can control and enhance patient outcomes, mainly through improving device-associated and hand hygiene- associated infections.

Significance of the Study

Health practitioners' actions spread several pathogens that cause daily infections in geriatric rehabilitation settings in hospitals because they clean their hands less than a half time they ought to. In some instances, they do not follow the appropriate cleaning procedures that can kill the germs. As a result, they end up transmitting infections to old patients while delivering care. Every patient is at risk of becoming infected while receiving treatments in a hospital with another illness rather than the one; they seek medication for. Also, healthcare workers are at risk of contracting infections while at duty if they fail to employ proper hygiene.

The detrimental results of poor hand hygiene require appropriate strategies and protocols to improve hand hygiene to immunize infections transmitted in hospitals to improve patient outcomes in geriatric settings. Therefore, there is a need to incorporate several approaches to ensure that hand hygiene protocol is observed in geriatric rehabilitation to protect senior patients from infections. These approaches include leadership styles to influence improvement in hand hygiene compliance.

Conclusion

The main concern in healthcare systems in the past few years is the prevention of advanced outcomes resulting from factors inherent in the system itself. The crucial part of enhancing patient outcomes is positively related to improving prevention measures to reduce acquired infections incidences. Studies estimating the economic analysis of the cost incurred when treating acquired conditions amount to 854,289 beds every year in Australia (Rodriguez et al., 2015 P. 410). This statistic indicates an urgent need for reducing these infections among the people to achieve 38,500 more admissions annually. The results of acquired infections are as serious the antibiotics meant for treatment becomes infective against some bacterial strains found to thrive in facilities globally. Unclean hands have been identified as a popular pathway of infections. Hand hygiene compliance concern has been incorporated in the nine World Health Organization Patients Safety Solutions.