Extract

Figen Dığın

3:   Tele-Health Practices in Postoperative Home Care of Elderly

1 Introduction

The elderly population in all over the world shows a rapid increase. The most important reason for increasing the elderly population is the prolongation of life. While 962.3 million elderly people live in 2017, this number is expected to rise to 2.1 billion in 2050 (United Nations, 2017). In the last century, the elderly population is more common in developing countries. Therefore, the importance of health services for elderly people is increasing in these countries (Ceylan, 2015). The increase in the workload of health institutions and employees due to increasing life expectancy and increasing chronic diseases in the workload cause an increase in the economic burden of countries (Tezcan, 2016).

While aging is a normal and inevitable physiological process, World Health Organization (WHO) has defined aging as a “continuous reduction of vital functions, a general reduction in the efficiency of the whole organism, and a reduced ability to adapt to environmental factors” (WHO, 2015). With age, the functional capacity and abilities of individuals are lost or decreased. Therefore, the daily activities of the elderly are decreasing and the elderly individuals become semi-dependent or fully dependent. This situation causes elderly people to be perceived as “dependency period” in developed countries (Çilingiroğlu and Demirel, 2004). Chronic diseases in old age result in physical and mental regression, which leads to continuous supervision and the need for health and social care...