Elderly people are a particularly vulnerable group in society and have special health problems. The world population of older people is increasing. People who are 65 years or older constitute 6% of the Turkish population, 90% of whom have chronic health problems. In Turkey, there is a high possibility that elderly people’s requirements are not met by today’s health care system in the way they would wish. They prefer not to be hospitalized when they have health problems. From a wider (...) perspective, various countries are still seeking how to provide the best care for elderly people. Our goal was to characterize home-based care for elderly people using an ethical approach as an area of interest for nurses and other health care professionals now and in the future, both for Turkey specifically and from a global perspective. We studied four case histories and then prepared a composite scenario and a short questionnaire for elderly people living in a specific district of Istanbul to evaluate their expectations from the health care system. We compared our findings with situations in other countries and have proposed some practical solutions. The results showed that these older people preferred to receive nursing care at home instead of in hospital in Turkey, and also in many other countries. In this article we discuss our findings, comparing them with those in the literature, and suggest that there should be nursing care at home with insurance coverage while using a proper ethical approach. (shrink)

Although older persons (aged 65 years and older) experience stressful ethical problems involving their health, research is lacking about this phenomenon. The purpose of this study was to describe and examine the content and basic nature of older persons’ ethical problems concerning their health. The conceptual framework and method combined ethical enquiry and phenomenology. The participants were 18 older persons and 12 of their children or grandchildren (for contextual understanding). The 19 women and 11 men, 73% of whom were Caucasian, (...) described 184 ethical problems, from which emerged 10 content categories. The basic nature of the ethical problems consisted of conflict, resolution and rationale. The results could assist health professionals to promote older persons’ ethical decision making, quality of life, and good death. (shrink)