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Theories of Aging

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Running head: Theories of Aging

Theories of Aging
Nate Aungkuldee
Milwaukee School of Engineering –School of Nursing

Abstract Gerontological nursing may be viewed as the nursing management for older population. Knowledge of nursing care and competency of caring for elderly become more important as the result of increasing population of old age people in the past decade and expecting in ongoing increasing in the next twenty years. There are many theories of aging that describe and explain aging process and how the individuals respond to changes that occur with aging. By understanding a normal process of aging, the quality of nursing care for this population may be enhanced. The purpose of this paper is to present and explore some of the theories of aging and apply the theory into nursing practice that cooperated with evidence base research studies to implement the plan of care for an older adult. Two main theories of aging: Biological theories and Psychological theories are the focused theories that being discussed in this paper.

According to many current resources the aging population in the U.S. is now rapidly growing. There were 4% of people age 65 and older or about 3 million people in 1900 (McGuire & Mefford, 2007). This old age population increased to 36.8 million people in 2005 with the increase of 3.2 million or 9.4% from 1995 (Mauk, 2010). As of today a newborn child is expected to live at least 77 years old, many of children these days will live up to 90 years or longer; some may live to become centenarians (McGuire & Mefford, 2007). The old age population age 65 and older is expected to increase by 15% in 2010 and 36% in 2020 (Mauk, 2010). Consequently, the demographic in nursing care will compose of more aging population which made knowledge and competency in caring for older

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