Self-care in older people with functional deficit: needs of long-term care.

The group of 65-year-olds is becoming more numerous and with greater needs for health care. So, is necessary the reflection about new models of provision, organization, and allocation of health resources. According to the United Nations Organization, 2015, in 2050 elderly people will reach two million people (20% of the world’s population), what mean that the number of people over 60 years old will exceed a population of young people under 15 years. Parallel to aging, less healthy lifestyles have contributed to the prevalence of chronic diseases, especially cerebrovascular diseases. Hypertension and diabetes mellitus are risk factors and increase predisposition to other diseases. With aging, there is an increased risk for developing chronic, oncological and degenerative diseases, which account for more than 50% of the burden of diseases, with profound implications on independency, use of health care and services.

Analysis of Needs and Resources

The initial aim of the CareMan project was to develop a joint degree programme that combined and utilised the strengths of the five collaborating universities that were already involved in delivering social and health care management education. Because the project was to be implemented in collaboration between education- al institutions, the collaboration had to be based on a detailed understanding of the national and institutional specifics of each of the individual academic enti- ties. During this process it was recognised that, due to a number of regulation issues, achieving the original aim would not be possible; ultimately, following a series of analytical works, which are presented below, it was decided that a set of three master’s level modules should be developed. One of the reasons was that the Finnish law on master’s degrees at universities of applied sciences (UAS) stated that the requirement for entry to a UAS master’s programme was a bachelor degree from a UAS or equivalent, plus a minimum of three years of work experience in an appropriate field. The three years’ work experience is also required from international students. In practice this meant that the participating Finnish UASs, Lahti and HAMK, could not award a diploma for foreign students without this work experience. The other European universities do not have the work experience requirement, although some take it as a bonus for admission (FHS UK). There were also other differences in law (e.g., requirements for mini - mum standards in Social Work education at FHS UK) that could not have been overcome during the period of project realisation. Consequently, the outcome was the development of only three common educational modules, each for 10 ECTS, which were developed, delivered and assessed during the lifetime of the project. The intention was that these would be integrated into the current masters’ level provision in each of the universities