| Abstract: | Introduction: A person's identity relates to individual's comprehension of himor herself as a discrete, separate entity, their self-esteem, individuality, self-reflection and the awareness of self. It is in constant pursuit to find answers to the questions like "Who are we?", "Where do we comefrom?", "What is our meaning and purpose of life?" Several authors define identity as three basic categories: identity as a self-image, identity as a cluster of feature attributes and identity as a reflection of different socialsystems. Several age-related physiological and pathological changes can lead to the identity crises. As many elderly persons opt for residential homesand experience problems of adaptation to living an institutionalised life, the identity crisis often occurs. Nurses should therefore be susceptiblealso to these aspects of aging while satisfying the physiological and psychosocial needs of their clients. Aim: The paper aims to assess the elderly personsć individual and narrow social identity according to their sex,age, education and social environment they lived in prior to entering an institution and define the role of nurses in the prevention of their identity crises. Methods: The research project was conducted in a form of a questionnaire encompassing 36 closed-ended survey questions. 15 questions addressed individual identity, 18 the narrow social identity and 3 the larger social (collective) identity. Within each kind of identity strong and weak identity was further expressed. The Pearson chi-square test was used in determining the difference of identity expression according to sex, age, educational level and the prior social environment of the respondents. Results: Included in the study were 164 elderly home residents, aged 65 through 97. No statistically significant difference was identified in the respondents' individual identity. (Abstract truncated at 2000 characters) |
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