Value System of Senior Citizens in Nursing Home Domov seniorů Jindřichův Hradec

This thesis focuses on the values preferred by senior citizens in old people's homes. Values are an integral part of every human life. The old age brings about a reorientation of values; there is a fixation on the family when senior citizens need to feel a sense of necessity and love. Accommodation of needs is a basis for the development of a value system where its value hierarchy is a structured system governed by importance. Old people feel a need for communication but this need is not very well saturated. With increasing age, feelings of loneliness occur and biological needs become accentuated. The empirical part of the thesis defines the objective to find out what life values are preferred by the senior citizens in the Old People's Nursing Home in Jindřichův Hradec. The method for data collection was a qualitative research, the method of case studies. The research group was selected using the method of quota purposive sampling. It consisted of six users of the OPNH; they were communicative men and women aged 65-85 years who received care allowance of the 2nd degree. The key technique used for data collection was an interview using a manual that was used with the six respondents at the OPNH in Jindřichův Hradec. A total of 15 users were interviewed who met the quota conditions but only six users were willing to participate in the research and to be interviewed. The last research question examined what their view of the life in the OPNH is. The research showed that the respondents were affected most by their stay at a triple room, which restricted their quality of sleep, privacy and adaptation. Retaining the dignity and communication with the staff is most important for the respondents. It is possible to comment answering the main research question What life values are preferred by the senior citizens in the Old People's Nursing Home in Jindřichův Hradec' by stating that the respondents feel as the most important their self-sufficiency and health, which undoubtedly affect the fulfilment of all the other needs, and the family that is the purpose of lives of the respondents, it is their driving force and they have something to live for. This thesis should highlight the importance of the issues preferred by users in the Old People's Nursing Home, the importance of cooperation with their families, how important is communication that helps the users to adapt to the new environment and then the creating of individual plans to maintain self-sufficiency of the senior citizens and, in the event they can no longer be self-sufficient and there is a need of help from another person, it is necessary to realize how important it is for the users to maintain their dignity. This thesis helps to justify the importance of the value system of senior citizens. It also expresses the efforts to improve the quality of life of senior citizens in residential social-service facilities while making social work more effective.