Age-Friendly Organizational Policies

When we think of policy – it is easy to assume we are talking about legislation at the provincial or federal level. This week’s module topic on Aging & Cognition, but especially the participation exercise got me thinking about how discouraging organizational policy and processes can be for our older adult population with normal and abnormal neurological decline.

For example, let’s say a community dwelling older adult is waiting in line at the pharmacy. Once it’s her turn, the pharmacist begins the intake process and jumps into asking about her medical history. There is a long line of people behind her. The senior becomes frazzled by the pressure to list her medications and after several minutes can feel the pharmacist grow inpatient as they groan and roll their eyes. She begins to feel anxious as she is being stigmatized as a senior who is being forgetful and incompetent. This organization, could greatly benefit from the publication Promoting Seniors’ Well-being: A Seniors’ Mental Health Policy Lens Toolkit (2008). This instrument was designed to assist organizations in developing policies, legislation, programs and services that promote and support the well-being and mental health of older adults.

Here is an example of one of the questions in the toolkit.

Older adults with normal mental health and abnormal mental health are likely to experience a decline in short-term working memory, less effective storage of this information, and a slower retrieval time. This, making it more challenging for an older adult (regardless of normal or abnormal mental health) to quickly list their medical history and medications in a time-sensitive situation (Horgan, 2019).

I would recommend for the pharmacy to design a new intake procedure that encourages all new clients to take a clipboard and fill out information away from the counter. This would be an indirect, age-friendly policy that supports older adults with varying cognitive ability by removing the time-sensitive pressure. Additionally it could save the pharmacy time (which is an infinite resource) per each interaction. MaCourt and colleagues identify that “unrecognized bias in policies can lead to inadequate planning and design of […] services […], costly in both human and economic terms (2008, p.6).”

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