Quality of life among elder people at elderly care homes in Bangladesh

Abstract

Abstract Background: Quality of life is an important issue for determining successful ageing. As an increasing elderly population in the world different services system has been run to support the elderly people. Elderly care home or old home is a big support system for elderly people in every country. Sometime this service system affect badly on quality of life of elderly people that is mostly in developing countries like Bangladesh, India. It is due to demographic change of a person‟s age and care home environment facility. There are service lacking, poor social support, economic difficulties, poor health status, more women without spouse at elderly care home determine bad quality of life that refers the elder population in vulnerable situation in Bangladesh. Objectives of the study: The objectives were to assess the quality of life among the elder people at elderly care home and find out the association between quality of life and socio-demographic factors among elder people at elderly care home. Methodology: This study was conducted by non-experimental quantitative method with the design of cross-sectional study by using convenient sampling among 60 participants at selected old home. Data were collected using face to face interview with a structured questionnaire and data were analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 17. Result and Discussion: After analyzing data, it was found that most of the participants at elderly care home leads low quality of life that about 40.0% (n=24), very bad 18.3% (n=11), moderate 38.3% (n= 23) and only 3.3% (n=2) lead good quality of life. Among them most were 65-69 and >75 years age group and they lead low quality of life than other group that showed a negative association. Similarly there were widow and female participants are more in elderly care home. The male and female ratio was 1:2(male: female). Among them most were in rural areas, who were illiterate, have economic difficulties, poor health status etc. There were significant association with quality of life and demographic factors (age, marital status, health status, present income source). Following these result in the perspective of elderly care home in Bangladesh, quality of life of elder people were poor. It is due to increasing more elderly people at care home without spouse, lack of service facilities, poor contact with society, poor health status, and economic difficulties to meet their needs. Conclusion: Quality of life of elder people at elderly care home depends on quality of care, social support, and good health status. It also depends on economic status, but it is sorry to say that these facilities are very poor at elderly care home in Bangladesh.