Multi-professional and multi-dimensional group education--a key to action in elderly persons.
OBJECTIVE
This study was intended to evaluate a multi-professional health-promoting and disease-preventive intervention organized as multi-professional senior group meetings, which addressed home-dwelling, independently living, cognitively intact elderly persons (80±), by exploring the participants' experiences of the intervention.


METHODS
The focus group methodology was used to interview a total of 20 participants. The informants had participated in four multi-professional senior group meetings at which information about the ageing process and preventive strategies for enhancing health were discussed.


RESULTS
The overall finding was that the elderly persons involved in the intervention lived in the present, but that the supportive environment together with learning a preventive approach contributed to the participants' experiencing the senior meetings as a key to action.


CONCLUSIONS
Elderly persons who are independent may have difficulty accepting information about preventing risks to health. However, group education with a multi-professional approach may be a successful model for achieving an exchange of knowledge, which may possibly empower the participants, give them role models, the opportunity to learn from each other and a sense of sharing problems with people in similar circumstances.
Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, The Sahlgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Lina.behm@neuro.gu.se
Lina
L
Behm
Lena
L
Zidén
Anna
A
Dunér
Kristin
K
Falk
Synneve
S
Dahlin-Ivanoff
D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D016330:Frail Elderly / Q000523:psychology*; D006266:Health Education / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011788:Quality of Life; D012944:Social Support