THE ROLE OF NURSING IN THE CARE OF ELDERLY PATIENTS

Abstract

This article addresses the issue related to nursing care aimed at elderly patients, seeking to expose some of the main aspects of old age such as the physiological changes that occur in the body with the arrival of old age. The work was based on the assumption that the nursing professional can act actively in the care and assistance to elderly patients in promoting psychosocial support, therefore, the objective of the study was to discuss the importance of the work of nursing professionals in the care of elderly patients, contributing to improvements in their health and quality of life. Therefore, at first a conceptualization of what old age would be was carried out and then its physiological effects on the human body are addressed, which lead to a decrease in vital functions. Next, it was demonstrated that the Brazilian State committed itself to creating public policies aimed at elderly people, such as the Statute of the Elderly through Law No. 10,741/2003 as a way of creating mechanisms aimed at ensuring quality of life in old age with protection and assistance to these individuals, in addition to highlighting the importance of nurses in caring for the elderly. The methodology used in this study was descriptive and qualitative bibliographic research, based on a bibliographic survey of scientific articles. It is concluded that nursing professionals need to always be updating themselves so that they can efficiently and effectively carry out their work when it is related to care and assistance for elderly patients.