Medical students visits to a nursing home: What does it add to quality of life?

Abstract

Objective: Aging is a natural process with physical and physiological changes beginning at birth leading to limitations in daily living activities as time passes. For elderly, these limitations have great impact on their quality of life. Our aim was to determine the general characteristics and health status of elderly living in a state resting and nursing home and the effect of the visits of medical students to their quality of life. Material and Methods: A randomized controlled trial was planned; a questionnaire including sociodemographic characteristics, health status, and SF-36 quality of life questions were applied to 18 people allocated to study and 36 individuals in control group who had no disability to complete the interview. The study group was visited by third year medical students in every 15 days for five times. During visits the students listened to their problems and talked about daily life. At the end of fourth month SF-36 was reapplied to all participants. SPSS 11.0 for Windows was used for data analysis including Chi-square (χ2) test or Fisher's exact test and Mann-Whitney U. Results: Cases and controls had no differences for SF-36 subscales at the beginning, but at the end of the study, there were statistically significant differences between group for physical functioning (p= 0.040), general health (p= 0.002), vitality (p= 0.000), role-emotional (p= 0.000), and mental health (p= 0.010). Conclusions: Although they were not relatives or friends, medical students' regular visits to elderly living in nursing home increased their scores of quality of life. © 2010 by Türkiye Klinikleri.