Transforming Perspective on Older Adults: Conceptualizing the “SilverTsunami” as a Cultural Paradigm Shift

Older adults need to be seen as their own diverse group. An older adult's uniqueness comes from vast life experiences and an insidiously changing physiology that impact quality of life and health outcomes. Nurse educators in clinical and classroom settings with baccalaureate student nurses can set an example for approaching the care of older adults as a nursing specialty as is done with pediatrics, maternal/child and psychiatric nursing. Assessing, planning, and implementation of care for this special population needs to be creative and unique in order to fit the needs of the older adult. Older adults present illnesses atypically. Their physiologies often buckle under traditional health care’s ‘one size fits all’, reactive focus on care. Also the specter of ageism can cloud clinicians’ perspective and color their approach to care due to more deep seated beliefs that are reflected in American society. Simply, most elders walk into hospitals and leave on gurneys because their complex, co-morbid conditions are misunderstood by a health care system devoted to single entity illness and a visceral fear of mortality. In order to care for this special population, health care must adopt a new think, a personalized, proactive approach. Health care needs a paradigm shift…a culture change.