Caring for Quality of Life Among Elderly in Bandar Maharani, Muar, Johor, Malaysia

Background: Modernization of Malaysians in many field especially in health sectors enhances the life expectancy of Malaysians. Malaysia is anticipated to become an ageing nation in 2030 accompanied by the rapid increase in the population of elderly globally. In Malaysia, the elderly constituted about 8.2% (2.4 Million) out of a population of 30 million people in 2012 and they will make up over 15% of the population by year 2030. Aim: Our objective is to assess the factors affecting the quality of life of elderly among the population in Bandar Maharani, Muar, Johor. Methodology: A descriptive, cross sectional study design based on the multi stage random sampling, residents aged above 60 years old and above was randomly chosen. Data was collected using self administered questionnaires that covered 4 domains which were the physical, psychological, social and environmental domain with 2 questions on general health satisfaction and quality of life. Data was analysed using PASW statistics student version 18. Results: It was found that most of the respondents rated “ neither poor nor good” quality of life and “ neither dissatisfied nor satisfied” health satisfaction. The environmental domain has the highest scores of quality of life, followed by social domain and also the physical domain. The least scores of quality of life was for the psychological domain. Conclusion: The study showed that although the respondents rated “ neither poor nor good” for the quality of life, but looking into the domain wise quality of life, it was evident that some domain has the highest contribution of quality of life such as the environmental domain and some was weakly associated such as the psychological domain. Other domains such as social and physical can futher be strengthened in order to improve the quality of life.