Online Class: Aging and Long Term Care 101
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11Lessons
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16Exams &
Assignments -
5Hours
average time -
0.5CEUs
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Video Audit
Available
Course Description
Embrace the Golden Age: Understanding and Thriving in an Aging America
The demographic landscape of America is undergoing a profound shift. Gone are the days when individuals in their mid-50s to 60s would recede into the quietude of retirement. Today, a robust workforce of seniors is redefining age norms, bringing with them unparalleled experience and wisdom.
Our comprehensive course offers an enlightening exploration into the intricate facets of aging in the 21st century. Dive into the nuances of the aging process, understand potential health risks, and uncover strategies for maintaining well-being across the golden years, whether you're 65 or gracefully embracing 105.
Course Highlights:
- Respecting and Understanding Seniors: Move beyond ageist stereotypes and myths surrounding the aging brain. Learn to appreciate the depth of experience, insights, and perspectives that seniors bring to the table.
- Navigating Health and Wellness: Decode the secrets to sustaining optimal health throughout the aging process, and gain insights into potential risks and ways to mitigate them.
- Understanding Long-Term Care: Dive deep into the diverse range of long-term care options available. Get acquainted with various payment methodologies and the intricacies of the CLASS Act, a federal initiative aimed at supporting long-term care.
- Self-care and Avoiding Caregiver Burnout: Discover essential techniques to ensure your well-being while compassionately caring for aging parents, spouses, or loved ones.
- The Potential Human Lifespan: Challenge the conventional wisdom surrounding human lifespan. It's not just 85 or 95—unravel the exciting scientific discoveries that shed light on the true potential of human longevity.
- Opportunities in Aging Services: For those aspiring to make a difference in the realm of aging services, learn about the plethora of rewarding career opportunities awaiting you in this booming sector.
Join us in this transformative journey. Whether you're approaching your senior years, caring for an elderly loved one, or considering a fulfilling career in aging services, this course promises not only to educate but to inspire a reimagined and optimistic perspective on what it truly means to embrace the "new old age."
Course Motivation
Unfortunately, the funds to pay for all of these aging boomers' needs are not assured by any means. With an overwhelming shortage of loved ones to care for family elders, with long-term care insurance unaffordable for average Americans, and so few eligible for Medicaid (only lower income seniors qualify), this giant swath of older Baby Boomers might find options and services limited, at best. Inadequate and inconsistent regulatory processes, elder abuse, poor quality of care, and lack of coordination among ancillary services for the aged -- all plague the industry.
Yet research on aging and disease, pain management, and products to help seniors look and feel younger, pervade our media, literature, movies, and will be the cultural impetus for thousands of new inventions, industries, and research to mend the aging bodies that refuse to sit this one out.
Insurance reforms, engagement of volunteers, and a new kind of non-profit will be needed to care for this valuable asset -- an energized and healthy (if they make healthy choices) older American.
That said, cases of illness and disease will multiply with the booming senior population. Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease, addiction, depression, social alienation -- and a new workforce must be there to assist the weak, the ill, and terminally ill in our American family. At the same time, leaders in the industry, and healthy seniors, continue to show the huge difference that healthy choices domake in preventing disease and extending longevity, enabling seniors to thrive into their 90s and beyond.
Despite weighty challenges, ALTC can, and should, seize upon scientific breakthroughs and new models to take this industry to new heights: A human lifespan of 120, people living to 100 as common as 85 once was, brain cells that replenish with use -- contrary to old assertions --all bode well for ALTC.
With medical and conceptual advances will come a new phenomenon: seniors as the largest consumer group in America, with significant political and economic clout, something never before seen in U.S. history. Their power will open doors for them to apply creative and precedent-setting solutions to problems of older Americans and ALTC.
The collective senior population must grab the brass ring, using their one-of-a-kind wisdom and experience, to be part of the solution -- to develop solutions, not only for the elderly and related industries -- but for future generations beset with crime, resource depletion, wars, and economies on the brink.
Course Objectives
At completion of this course, you will:
1. Have a grasp of the challenges in ALTC, and new prototypes emerging to meet the requirement of a much more diverse and larger market segment of seniors.
2. Have an understanding of existing types of ALTC, and evolving new types of services and settings for long-term care that are just beginning to emerge -- which represent aging services and long-term living options capable of fulfilling the demands of the marketplace.
3. Be familiar with the psychology of aging, normal cognitive changes, the latest findings on the brain's resiliency, keys to a satisfying aging experience and how to keep the mind sharp, and proactive steps to reduce the likelihood of depression, Alzheimer's, and dementia.
4. Learn the meaning of a "healthy lifestyle," commonalities of the clusters of centenarians across the globe, physical effects and biological processes of aging, what is and is not a normal part of aging, prevalent diseases and illnesses, and recommendations to avoid or manage them.
5. Understand the problems with quality in ALTC, and what can be done to improve quality -- such as a more centralized and consistent oversight delivery system, the urgent need for more staff, a desirable work environment to quell the relentless turnover, and government's involvement in assuring a pool of talent will be forthcoming to care for and train those who care for our elderly.
6. Be aware of the decrease in available family members to care for their elders, and how to fill that role when family cannot, options for juggling elder care with work and the demands of daily living, caring for yourself as caregiver to avoid burnout, and guilt regarding an aging spouse or parent.
7. Have knowledge of the rights of seniors: the need to protect them from abuse, neglect and exploitation (which is widespread); the role of ombudsmen to investigate and redress violations; and the federal legislation that grants seniors rights.
8. Understand essential legal matters of seniors, including legalities of death and dying, wills, powers of attorney, and legal terminology essential for seniors, their loved ones, and those who work in ALTC.
9. Become aware of the fundamental role of social involvement and emotional connection for seniors -- how it prevents disease, and how old age can be cause for joy and delight versus fear and despair.
10. Know the methods of paying for care: insurance and government funding, and one's own savings; the looming funding crunch with increased need for ALTC; how to keep insurance costs down, and the costs of the levels and types of care, based upon the number of activities of daily living one cannot manage on one's own.
11. Be able to obtain further resources for jobs and careers in ALTC, successful family elder care, managing your own senior years to best advantage, and government sites covering hundreds of links on ALTC, and all aspects of aging.
The number of citizens over age 85 will actually decrease from 2010 to 2030; however, in 2030, a very significant increase will begin, and by 2050 the 85+ segment will be upwards of 25 percent of the U.S. population.
Can we build enough nursing homes and retirement communities for them all? Or is that even the desired solution? In 2011, 90 percent of seniors indicate they want to stay in their homes as they age. Already 30 percent of seniors in the U.S. live alone.
The boomers will have a hand in building systems to meet their own and their fellow seniors' needs -- to fit their actively aging lives, since they are the power brokers in business, politics, government, education, and non-profits. Instead of nursing homes, the trend will be "aging in place" -- finding ways to age at home safely, with needed care, equipment, gadgets, and designs built in to compensate for physical -- and even cognitive -- limitations of seniors.
There is cause for concern, but also for optimism, about the potential to refashion ALTC to deliver the quantity and quality of services needed by the next graduating class from the school of life.
Course Lessons
Lesson 1: The "New Old" Generation in Aging and Long Term-Care: Challenges & Reasons for Optimism
The aging and long-term care industry is at an epochal moment, with an unspoken mandate to accommodate a larger proportion of seniors than ever before. Baby Boomers are the "new old," and their version of active aging sets a precedent.Lesson 2: Types of Care and Services for Seniors
A crisis is brewing: The dearth of available living spaces and services for seniors will only increase without drastic changes in the ALTC industry.Lesson 3: The Psychology of Aging
Seniors normally experience many beneficial mental and emotional changes with aging, as well as some inconvenient or annoying changes. This lesson will discuss the findings of several scientific analyses of seniors' changing brain functions.Lesson 4: Physical Health: Unique Needs and Challenges for Seniors
Taking care of your body and managing stress are crucial for seniors to continue to thrive. Whether a senior is 55 or 80, he or she can make changes that can turn around poor health, aches and pains, and propensity for disease.Lesson 5: ALTC Challenges in Maintaining Quality Care and Services: Naming the Problems, Exploring Solutions
Current oversight systems are spread out, and out of touch with one another: some federal, some state, some local, some nonexistent. Regulation of service providers runs the gamut - from none, to a little, to ineffective micromanaging.Lesson 6: Volunteer Caregivers - Issues for Family and Others Who Donate Elder Care
This generation's major challenge is how to assist aging relatives, and also hold down full time jobs, take care of their own families, and themselves.Lesson 7: The Rights of Elders and Consumers of ALTC Services
Seniors are at risk, similar to children, of rights violations and abuse. Some people may be unaware that seniors have specific rights pertaining to care in nursing homes, their own homes, and other living facilities.Lesson 8: Legal Matters of the Aged and Terminally Ill
When a senior becomes too ill to make his or her own health, financial, and business decisions, stress will be greatly reduced if arrangements have been made regarding who will take over these decisions.Lesson 9: Paying for Aging and Long-Term Care
Insurance, out of pocket, and government funding (Medicaid, Medicare). This lesson will help you understand your options and eligibility. What will it cost?Lesson 10: The Social Imperative - Invaluable Social Ties Lead to Healthy Aging and Longevity
This lesson will discuss the scientific research into factors leading to longevity.Lesson 11: Course Review and Resources for More information on Aging and Long-Term Care
Course Review
Learning Outcomes
- Define challenges and describe reasons for optimism in aging and long term care.
- Describe types of care and services for seniors.
- Describe the psychology of aging.
- Summarize physical health - unique needs and challenges for seniors.
- Identify the challenges in maintaining quality care and services.
- Describe volunteer care givers - issues for family and others who donate elder care.
- Summarize the rights of elders and consumers of aging and long term care.
- Recognize legal matters of the aged and terminally ill.
- Describe paying for aging and long term care.
- Recognize the invaluable social ties that lead to healthy aging and longevity.
- Demonstrate mastery of lesson content at levels of 70% or higher.
Additional Course Information
- Document Your Lifelong Learning Achievements
- Earn an Official Certificate Documenting Course Hours and CEUs
- Verify Your Certificate with a Unique Serial Number Online
- View and Share Your Certificate Online or Download/Print as PDF
- Display Your Certificate on Your Resume and Promote Your Achievements Using Social Media
Student Testimonials
- "As a caretaker for my spouse, the information was invaluable. I will definitely return for future review." -- William P.
- "This was a great course, a lot of useful information and easy to hit the outcomes. Well designed and loved the written assignments and feedback. Thank You." -- Brandy S.
- "The instructor is always there to answer my questions and very on top of things. The instructor and the course are the best!" -- Mary V.
- "I really enjoyed taking the course and learning more of what to expect as one grows older and what one's options are depending on their health." -- Jean B.
- "Great instructor, my overall positive experience with this class gave me the confidence to take more online courses." -- Sharon M.
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