Overview
Bio-psycho-social-spiritual assessment
Students are expected to complete an interview of an older adult (must be over the age 60, and the person cannot be a relative). The goal of the interview is to allow the student the opportunity to enhance communication and assessment skills. In addition to the interview with the older adult, students are expected to interview (with the permission of the older adult) - a collateral contact, such as a service provider, friend or family member. After the interviews, the student will write an assessment, their impressions, and recommendations based on the information gathered.
In your interview, make sure ask questions and gather information that will allow you to address the following information in your assessment:
- Demographics of the person: Age, gender, ethnic background, relationship status, children (living, deceased), employment status, educational level, living arrangements.
- Physical status: Disabilities, (brief) medical history, mobility, general satisfaction/dissatisfaction with current health status, ability to complete activities of daily living and instrumental activities of daily living.
- Psychological status: Mental status, general outlook on life, coping abilities, affect, memory, and spiritual or religious activities. Please use one of the assessment tools discussed in class to screen memory AND depression or anxiety– include a copy of both with your paper (these copies do not count toward the page limit).
- Social functioning: Identify social and support systems and person’s ability to participate within these systems. Describe a typical day for this person.
- Spirituality: Describe the person’s spirituality/spiritual belief system. Use one of the spiritual assessment tools discussed in the textbook and/or from the Hodge (2013) article in Module 10.
- Formal support/service usage: Identify any formal community services received.
- Informal caregiver support: Describe any informal caregiver (i.e. unpaid) support provided by family, friends, or neighbors including caregiver profile/roles, issues related to diversity and caregiving, and common caregiving stressors.
- Economics: Obtain a general idea of the person’s financial resources. Does the person feel they have adequate resources; what kinds of financial concerns, if any, do they have?
- Social determinants of health: Discuss the social determinants of health that have promoted (or not promoted) the healthy aging of the older adult.
- Social theories of aging: Chose (1) social theory of aging to explain the social behavior of the older adult. Provide examples that align with the social theory.
- Potential problems: Discuss areas of concern identified by the older person and/or identified by the student.
- Impressions and Recommendations regarding Interventions: Include your impressions about the information gathered – how do you think the older adult is doing, what concerns you have that maybe the older adult did not mention, and include possible interventions or services to address concerns/problems, including enhancing current services to meet the need. You must recommend at least (1) individual intervention and (1) group intervention. Justify your selection of these interventions by citing at least one peer reviewed article for each (one for the individual and one for the group).
- Paper is well-written, organized (including section headings), and grammatically appropriate. Paper was between 12-15 double spaced, full pages not including title page and references. Paper followed APA 7 guidelines. Paper uses 12-point font either Arial or Times New Roman. The copy of the assessment tools do not count toward the page limit.