Seniors and Their Quality of Life

Aim: We aimed to find out whether the quality of life of seniors is higher in either home or institutional environment. Methods: We´d realized the on the sample of 128 seniors living in institutional and home environment. We studied their quality of life via structured questionnaire WHOQL - BREF. Results: The achieved results show correlation between satisfaction with the health and perception of quality of life. We found that in the domain of physical health (presence of pain, degree of mobility, fatigue, loss of energy, the ability to do work, self-reliance, the need for frequent medical attention) the final domain score was 16.63 at home and 16.37 in the institutional environment (on a scale of 4-20). The scores found in our research are lowered compared with population norms. Quality of life of elderly living in their homes was 14.8 ± 10 and in the institutional environment it was 12.8 ± 11.09. The respondents from home environment reported better quality of life than respondents in the institutional environment. Conclusion: The support of quality of life should be one of the basic aims of nursing care. Nurses should make early identification of negative factors affecting quality of life and eliminate them by suitable nursing interventions.