Multi-professional and multi-dimensional group education - a key to action in elderly persons

Purpose: 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. Method: 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.