Introduction:

Population aging is an aspect to take into account based on the particularities of today's society. Health services must prepare for an increase in elderly patients, and the multidisciplinary analysis of the phenomenon becomes a necessity for nursing as a science. This category is addressed by different authors, so it is necessary to evaluate their approaches in the international and national context.

Objective:

To analyze aging from the perspective of the behavioral model of Dorothy E. Johnson, considering its relationships in the current health conditions of a vulnerable population as the elderly patient.

Methods:

A systematic bibliographic review was carried out to develop a reflexive critical analysis of the content of documents, for which original and review articles were considered. The keywords used were envejecimiento [aging], modelo conductual [behavioral model], ancianos [elderlies], teorías de enfermería [nursing theories], identified in DECs or MeSH. The inclusion criteria for the selection of the articles were: articles in Spanish available in the web portals of selected data, presenting adherence to the topic, published between 2003 and 2016, and clearly treating the theoretical referential selected.

Conclusions:

The research on aging and behavioral systems allowed us to contextualize this phenomenon from the perspective of a foreign theory. Many authors approach it; nevertheless, the natural problems that challenge the health of the elderly patient in the Cuban context condition the need to promote the updating of knowledge in correspondence with the international situation.

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