Högskolan i Skövde

Background: Thai older adults are valuable resources in their society. The Thai health service system is challenged when it comes to ensuring that older Thai adults can continue to live healthy and independent lives in society. It is of great value to support independence and improve older people’s active ageing. Promoting lifestyle changes by applying the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle (PDSA cycle), at group meetings in a municipality context, is a way of focusing on active ageing. This study aims to describe older adults´ experiences of lifestyle change six months after finishing group meetings applying the PDSA cycle.

Methods: A qualitative approach with individual interviews and a qualitative content analysis were used with 12 Thai older adults who participated in the meetings applying the PDSA cycle.

Results: Six months after finishing applying the PDSA cycle, some older adults kept their individual goals and were influenced by their family surroundings. They also formulated additional goals. Three categories and six sub-categories emerged: Keeping individual goals, influenced by the surroundings, and formulation of additional goals were the overall categories.

Conclusions: These Thai older adults showed that they had the ability to make lifestyle changes with the support of the PDSA cycle, but not all maintained their planned activities after six months. The question is how healthcare professionals and the surroundings, may further support and motivate these people to maintain these changes based on their own preferences in a sustainable way. 

Introduction: Finding solutions to communicate difficulties in care interactions between health care professionals and older migrant patients may be facilitated by the use of digital translation tools. The aim was to explore older migrant patients’ and health professionals’ experiences using digital translation tools in transcultural care.

Methodology: A systematic qualitative literature review, based on nine quality assessed articles published 2009 to 2024 from five databases, and analyzed using thematic analysis.

Results: Three themes and eight subthemes emerged: advantages of using translation tools describes the benefits experienced using such tools; limitations and challenges highlights the problems identified in their use; and improvement suggestions for the functions of the translation apps describes adjustments and developments of the translation tools.

Discussion: Digital translation used in basic care, may enhance relationships and equity of care, but should not substitute human interpreters in complex care conversations. Translation tools need to be developed according to older users’ abilities.

Introduction: Immigrant family caregivers are increasing worldwide, likewise the number of older people with dementia. Caring for a person with dementia is demanding, with the carer's own life put on hold. Immigrant family caregivers have been less studied. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore immigrant family caregivers' experiences of living with an older person with dementia.

Method: A qualitative approach was chosen, consisting of open-ended interviews analysed using qualitative content analysis. The ethical principles of the Helsinki Declaration were applied in the study, which was duly approved by a regional ethics review board.

Results: The content analysis resulted in three main categories: (i) the diverse roles of a family caregiver; (ii) the impact of language and culture on daily life and (iii) wish for support from society.

Conclusions: Living with a person with dementia is demanding and burdensome and the consequences of working without any rest may increase social isolation and impair quality of life. Immigrants and country-born family caregivers living with a person with dementia seem to have similar care experiences, but immigrant family caregivers seem to receive help rather late due to a lack of information about the services available, language barriers and to financial reasons. A wish for support earlier on in the caring process was expressed, likewise for care services in the participants' native language. The various Finnish associations and peer support were important sources of information about support services. Together with culturally adjusted care services, these could contribute to better access to care, to quality and to equal care. 

The aim of this study was to explore experiences of applying the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle among older Thai adults. A qualitative research approach was used based on focus group interviews with eight male and five female participants aged 62–78 years old. Data was analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis. The findings presented how older adults set, carried out, and adjusted their own lifestyle change plans to enhance active aging. Although participants experienced difficulties at first, learning during the group process following the PDSA steps became easier. Support from the moderator during meetings, as well as family during the execution of their plans at home ensured successful application of the PDSA cycle. The PDSA cycle encouraged participants to be concerned about their health, something they themselves found beneficial. This tool will be useful to apply in health practice and policy when performing group activities to enhance active aging.

Background

The proportion of the older Thai population is increasing rapidly. Lifestyle may impact active ageing in later life. Interventions that empower older Thai adults to initiate and carry out lifestyle changes are needed. This study applied the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle, a tool for improving lifestyle changes, with the aim of exploring interactions among older Thai adults when participating in group activities.

Method

Focused ethnography was used based on participant observations, field notes and video recordings of 15 older Thai adults aged 62–78 years.

Results

Older Thai adults faced difficulties at the beginning since they were unfamiliar with initiating and carrying out lifestyle changes according to the PDSA concept. This provided a learning opportunity enabling older Thai adults to reach their individual goals of lifestyle change.

Conclusions

The PDSA cycle has the potential to empower older adults in group contexts to promote lifestyle changes related to active ageing.

INTRODUCTION: There is an urgent need for registered nurses with gerontological competence within long-term care (LTC) of older adults. Despite increases of life expectancy, LTC for older adults is not emphasized in nursing curricula in neither Sweden nor Thailand. Thus, the aim was to explore conceptions on gerontological nursing (GN) among Swedish and Thai nurse educators.

METHOD: A qualitative phenomenographic method, based on open-ended interviews with five Thai and nine Swedish nurse educators was conducted.

RESULTS: The results indicate a paradox between the educators' knowledge about the implications of global aging, their hope of own aging, and LTC. The ethical responsibility of being credible and a source of inspiration in teaching about aging are focused, while GN seem to be less important.

DISCUSSION: To increase students' interest in GN, measures need to be taken within the educational arenas, where the educators' own conceptions toward GN, cultural aspects of aging, and LTC are discussed.

Background: Health, participation, and security are the basic pillars of active ageing suggested by the WHO. The concept is used by professionals but requires exploration from the perspectives of older people themselves. This study aims to explore how older adults experience and describe health, participation, and security. Methods: A qualitative research approach was used based on open-ended interviews with 20 older Thai adults aged 60–92 years. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Results: The results showed perspectives related to experiences of daily life and local culture. Health while ageing, was described as the absence of barriers to continued daily living, combined with a peaceful and adaptive mindset. Participation was described as maintaining social networks and being a formal volunteer, with an emphasis on the “making of merits”, of meaningful activities and being respected. Security was described as manageable living conditions and managing to finalize life well by balancing dependency and independency in relation to children to sustain the traditional value of gratitude between generations. Conclusions: These understandings will support healthy policy planning by providing resources and activities that relate to older Thai adults’ perspectives of health, participation and security and ultimately contribute to a better quality of life. 

Background: About fifty percent of Swedish Non-Lutheran Clergy leave the vocation before retirement resulting in huge personal, financial, psychological, emotional, spiritual and social costs. The factors behind this substantial flood out has scarcely been researched. From the multifaceted problematic aspects of pastoral work, the aim of this study was to explore the clergy’s experiences of work stressors with the focus on Role-stress. Method: A qualitative approach with 19 open ended interviews was used and the interview material underwent qualitative content analysis. Results: Multiple external role-senders together with the individual pastor’s experienced, internal expectations and demands, generated different types of Clergy role-categories that surfaced during the analysis. These roles were accompanied by several role-stressors as apparent with the roles Servants of men and Servants of God and the presence of Vision Conflict. Further the pastor as the Church’s ultimately responsible person is plagued by Role-ambiguity and Role-confusion, and as the Proven trustworthy administrator struggling with Role-conflict. Family-work and Work-family conflicts, especially for female pastors, contributed to Work overload, this consequence also effecting the male colleagues during the generic attempts to meet as many of the Church members’ expectations as possible. The accumulated Work overload, together with a lowered level of Work Satisfaction, boosted the Turnover intentions. Conclusions: Mutual succinct information between employer and employee, active continuous communication and refined and updated organizational structure need to be coordinated in order to lower the level of experienced role stress and thus reduce the present substantial number of Clergy leaving the vocation prematurely.

Background In general, activities to promote well being among the elderly in Thailand are not selfinitiated Therefore, older people need to be encouraged to find out how to manage their daily life and activities This study applied the concept of the PDSA wheel Plan Do Study Act in order to enhance their wellbeingThe activity called Lomwong SaansookThai wordsLSmeetings implemented among older adults aged 60 and above The PDSA concepts are used to encourage participants to plan a goal, do it by themselves, and use the group dynamic with other participants in studying evaluating to improve the activities Topics of meetings included health issues, participation, and security related to the active aging concepts Objective To describe older adults¶ perceptions of changes and improvement in their daily lives after participating in LSmeetings Methodology This qualitative study employed the phenomenography method using focus group interviews which were conducted two weeks after four LSmeetings with 15 participants They were divided into two focus groups contained seven and eight participants including males and females Data were collected by field notetaking and video recordingData were analyzed by the multistage coding process to identify themes of description Results The participants described their perceptions of changes and improvements by five themes, including not familiar but possible with supporting, behaviors improving, meaningful knowledge needs, learn with each other, and success factors DiscussionConclusion Thai older people in this area had difficulties to make goals of lifestyle changes by themselves, but it was possible with the support of the moderator As a result, their healthrelated behaviors had improved The examples of a lifestyle change were improvements in fooddrink intake, exercise, and saving money; however, the causes of changing behaviors were not confirmed clearly The important factors of changing behaviors were meaningful new knowledge, group process, support from the moderator, and good relationships with health personnelAccording to the results of this study, it can be concluded that the meeting using the PDSA wheel may be able to use as a guideline providing sustainable activities for Thai older people to encourage improving individual implementation of lifestyle changes, in order to enhance their wellbeing.