The role of nursing home personnel in meeting the needs of communication of the elders residing at nursing homes: A fieldwork at a nursing home in Eskişehir

Aging, growing or wearing off are inevitable consequences of being alive. Humanity kept chasing the immortality since the very first time of its existence, yet have not prevailed. The idea of immortality finds its place in art and science very deeply, thus, this shows the mankind's fondness on immortality. Nevertheless, the law of entropy lies behind everything on earth. Entropy states that, everything wears off and degrades. So, senescence is an inevitable period of human life that occurs many setbacks. However this period that brings many limitations to a persons life doesn't decrease the certain needs that arising from a social being. One of this needs is communication need. Shrinking of the social environment by aging can limits the meeting of the communication needs of individuals. Especially, elderly residents of nursing homes have lesser contacts to commune with. For this reason, in this thesis, a qualitative research performed to evaluate the role of nursing home personnel in meeting the needs of communication satisfaction of the elders who residing in nursing homes. The scope of this study includes 12 participants that resides in a nursing home in Eskişehir Tepebaşı Municipality. In-depth interviews were performed with these participants and the results organised and interpreted by descriptive analysis. According to the results of the research; it's seen that the communication needs are not met while the basic needs of the participants are met. This may result from lack of communication capabilities of the nursing home employees. Keywords: Elderly, Communication, Nursing Home