Home Away from Home: Acclimatization of Filipino Elderly from being Home to a Sense of being "At Home" in an Elderly Institution

This grounded study examined the process of acclimatization or the process of changing perspectives of a person so as to get used to or feel "at home" among a select group of Filipino elderly in a nursing care facility. As institutionalization of the elderly is not typical in the Philippine context, varied responses were analyzed to understand the factors and the course that an elderly person undergoes over a set period of time to achieve acclimatization. Twenty elderly (n = 20) residents were purposively recruited and subjected to an in-depth interview that chronicled their experiences on their previous and present lives and on the process by which they were able to adjust to a relatively new setting. Preliminarily, a robotfoto was devised to obtain demographic data including visitation frequencies and familial relationships, and this was followed by an in-depth interview. Through the constant comparison method, an interesting model called the Hourglass of Acclimatization emerged. This model yielded two distinct phases contributing to successful acclimatization. One is the Conversion phase, or imbibing the main notion of transforming one's perspectives of him or herself and his or her environment; there is also the Immersion phase, which describes how an elderly involves him or herself completely into the life he or she is supposed to live. This emerged model can contribute to the development of nursing interventions focusing on elderly experiences in the entire course of relocation to a new environment other than what they call "home."