The concept of hope in nursing 4: hope and gerontological nursing.

This article is the fourth in a series of six that explores the nature of hope, reviews the existing theoretical and empirical work in several discrete areas of nursing and provides case studies to illustrate the role that hope plays in clinical situations. This article focuses on hope within the specialty of gerontological nursing. To date, most of the hope research, using qualitative and quantitative methodologies, has focused on well and chronically ill young or middle-aged adults; very few studies have examined hope in the older adult and specifically how older adults maintain hope in spite of multiple losses and/or changes. Hope has been studied in several elderly populations, including grieving widow(er)s, community-based older persons, persons living in long term care facilities and elders recruited from senior citizen centres. Research findings provide initial direction for the assessment of hope, and a reference for evaluating the effectiveness of these strategies. There remains, however, a need for continuing research in the area of hope in the older adult that is multifaceted and applicable to both practice and education.