In my master's thesis, I conducted a research of the life of elderly people in the Gradišče Retirment home, during the covid -19 virus epidemic. The main point of interest was, how the pandemic itself and especially the measures to curb the spread of the virus affected the lives of the elderly in nursing home. I also looked into how the measures to contain the Epidemic impacted the feeling of loneliness of the elderly. In the first part of the master's thesis I presented the theory of aging and old age, the concept of quality age, life of the elderly in nursing homes and institutional care, the concept of loneliness, where I covered the importance of the role of social networks and family. In addition, I also described the phenomenon of the covid -19 virus, life during the epidemic in the Gradišče Retirement Home, and focused mainly on the connection between loneliness and the covid -19 virus. In the second part of the thesis, I focused on the presentation of the obtained results of qualitative research. Namely, I conducted seven interviews with the residents of the Gradišče Retirement Home. The results showed that for many elderly people, the transition to a retirement home was a difficult life test, manily due to health problems. Results also showed that those who have been surrounded by family and important people in their home environment feel lonely at Gradišče due to reduced contact with them. The emergence of the covid -19 virus and the first infections among residents in the home has drastically changed the way of retirement home living. Residents had to adapt to the new situation, fight possible infection, and worst of all, some even relived the feeling of loneliness due to the established measures to contain the covid -19 virus.
|
