Retooling for an Aging America
Retooling for an Aging America

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2008-08-27

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 0309131952

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As the first of the nation's 78 million baby boomers begin reaching age 65 in 2011, they will face a health care workforce that is too small and woefully unprepared to meet their specific health needs. Retooling for an Aging America calls for bold initiatives starting immediately to train all health care providers in the basics of geriatric care and to prepare family members and other informal caregivers, who currently receive little or no training in how to tend to their aging loved ones. The book also recommends that Medicare, Medicaid, and other health plans pay higher rates to boost recruitment and retention of geriatric specialists and care aides. Educators and health professional groups can use Retooling for an Aging America to institute or increase formal education and training in geriatrics. Consumer groups can use the book to advocate for improving the care for older adults. Health care professional and occupational groups can use it to improve the quality of health care jobs.

Elderhood
Elderhood

Author: Louise Aronson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2019-06-11

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 1620405482

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Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction A New York Times Bestseller Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Winner of the WSU AOS Bonner Book Award Winner of the 2022 At Home With Growing Older Impact Award As revelatory as Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson's Elderhood is an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life. For more than 5,000 years, "old" has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we've made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied. Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks, noted Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her quarter century of caring for patients, and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that's neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy--a vision full of joy, wonder, frustration, outrage, and hope about aging, medicine, and humanity itself. Elderhood is for anyone who is, in the author's own words, "an aging, i.e., still-breathing human being."

Training Physicians to Care for Older Americans
Training Physicians to Care for Older Americans

Author: David B. Reuben

Publisher: National Academies

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13:

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This background paper, prepared by two members of the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Strengthening the Geriatric Content of Medical Education, addresses the progress made in physicians' geriatric and gerontological education. The report appears in six chapters. After a brief introduction on health care reform and medical education, geriatric medicine and geriatricians are discussed in chapter 2. Some of the topics examined here include the historical development of geriatrics, physician certification, and the utilization and financing of health services. Chapter 3 analyzes past efforts to develop geriatrics and explores increases in geriatric faculty, geriatric fellowship programs and residencies, continuing medical education, and obstacles to the development of academic geriatrics. Chapter 4 assesses the demand for geriatricians and faculty, while in chapter 5, some strategies to strengthen physicians' geriatrics training are presented. Some of these strategies include revised financial policies, the revamping of service delivery, the strengthening of faculty development and academic programs, and recruiting and marketing ideas. The last chapter comments briefly on the 1993 Institute of Medicine Report. The recommendations made in the above report were grouped into five categories: (1) improved education in geriatrics; (2) leadership centers; (3) enhanced attractiveness of geriatrics; (4) revision in payment policies; and (5) research support. (RJM)

Families Caring for an Aging America
Families Caring for an Aging America

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2016-12-08

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0309448069

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Family caregiving affects millions of Americans every day, in all walks of life. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are caregivers of an older adult with a health or functional limitation. The nation's family caregivers provide the lion's share of long-term care for our older adult population. They are also central to older adults' access to and receipt of health care and community-based social services. Yet the need to recognize and support caregivers is among the least appreciated challenges facing the aging U.S. population. Families Caring for an Aging America examines the prevalence and nature of family caregiving of older adults and the available evidence on the effectiveness of programs, supports, and other interventions designed to support family caregivers. This report also assesses and recommends policies to address the needs of family caregivers and to minimize the barriers that they encounter in trying to meet the needs of older adults.