西方老年人长期照护研究的地理学回顾

A geographic review of Western research on long-term care for the elderly

从地理学视角来看,西方国家关于老年人长期照护的研究经历了从非地理学者的早期探索,到多学科交叉领域,再到地理学研究分支领域的发展过程。论文在回顾已有文献的基础上,梳理出西方老年人长期照护地理学研究的5个主题:①老年人长期照护需求的地理分布;②照护设施的空间布局及可达性;③长期照护服务的利用状况与制约因素;④不同空间或场所的照护体验;⑤长期照护的政策讨论与应对,以期为从地理学视角解读中国特定社会经济背景下的老年人长期照护提供借鉴,并对中国老年人长期照护的地理学研究提出展望。

In many Western countries, geographic studies on long-term care for the elderly originated from geriatrics and nursing science, and then from the sub-fields of medical geography, health geography, and disability geography, and care geography-a new interdisciplinary field has emerged. Medicine, health,disability, and health care are core issues in the studies on the changing geography of elderly care, which has focused increasingly more on long-term care in recent years. Based on an intensive review of Western literature,this article extracts five themes from existing geographic studies on long-term care for the elderly, that is, the geographical distribution of long-term care needs of the elderly, the accessibility of care facilities and change, the use of long-term care and barriers for the utilization, the care experience of people in relation to space and place,and discussion on long-term care policies. In recent years, Chinese geographers have been paying more attention to the aging problem. However, the research perspective has been still relatively narrow and few academic papers have been published in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI) library so far. Geographic research on long-term care for the disabled elderly is a brand new field. Given the substantial amount of disabled elderly population in increasing proportions, long-term care provision has become the key issue and major focus of the elderly support system in China. Thus it is of high scientific value and urgent practical needs to carry out geographic research on long-term care for the elderly. It may not be unreasonable to suggest that researchers provide geographic perspectives to their research with regard to the socioeconomic backgrounds, policy demand,and research foci in China. Through a comparative study of the Chinese and Western contexts, the emphases of research in the future are proposed with the aim to develop deeper insights for elderly long-term care policies in China, including geographic database, theories, and research system construction.