A classic text that documents the "work" of everyday life in a nursing home. In 1973 sociologist Jaber F. Gubrium spent several months at a nursing home as a participant-observer. Through his observations, interviews, and transcriptions, Gubrium recounts case studies of clients, doctors, the dynamics between them, patient socialization, and the intimacies of daily hygiene.
This text employs a communication perspective to examine the aging process and the ability of individuals to adapt successfully to aging. It continues the groundbreaking work of the first edition, emphasizing a life-span approach toward understanding the social interaction that occurs during later life. The edition provides a comprehensive update on the existing and emerging research within communication and aging studies and considers such topics as notions of successful aging, positive and negative stereotypes toward older adults, and health communication issues. It raises awareness of the barriers facing elderly people in conversation and the importance such conversations have in elderly people's lives. The impact of nonrelational processes, such as hearing loss, are considered as they impact relationships with others and affect the ability to age successfully. The book is organized into 14 chapters. Each chapter is written so that the reader is presented with an exhaustive review of the pertinent and recent literature from the social sciences. As in the first edition, when the literature is empirically based, the communicative ramifications are then discussed. Readers of this volume will gain greater understanding of the importance of their communicative relationships and how significant they remain across the life span. Developed for students in communication, psychology, nursing, social gerontology, sociology, and related areas, Communication and Aging provides important insights on communication to all who are affected by the aging process.
In our society, the overwhelming majority of people die in later life. They typically die slowly of chronic diseases, with multiple co-existing problems over long periods of time. They spend the majority of their final years at home, but many will die in hospitals or care homes. This book explores the possibilities for improving the care of older people dying in residential care and nursing homes. It argues that there are aspects of palliative care that, given the right circumstances, are transferable to dying people in settings that are not domestic or hospice based. End of Life in Care Homes describes what happens in nursing and residential care homes when a resident is dying, how carers cope, and the practical, health and emotional challenges that carers face on top of their day-to-day work. Based on detailed research from both the UK and US, the book shows how the situation can be improved.
The study of "the end of life" has become a major focus on medicine, the social sciences, ethics, and religion. This volume brings together the latest research on issues around death and dying, life's attributes as it nears death, planning and preparation for death, and care and intervetion-related issues. This evidence-based finding of this volume will help shape how we approach the topic for years to come.
Aimed at professionals in market research and journalism as well as researchers, academics and students, this handbook is both an encyclopedia providing discussions of methodological issues and a story of a particular tale of interviewing.
Increased concern in the 1960s about the quality and availability of health care in the United States prompted a variety of attempts to develop new policies and to modify the existing health care system. The authors of this book review some of those attempts and provide critical commentary on a broad range of new and continuing problems. Their succinct review of many vital aspects of the current health care system clearly demonstrates the successes and failures of health care policy and its impact on the overall system. The authors discuss consumer involvement in the health care system, the development of neighborhood health clinics, health maintenance organizations and health systems agencies, veterans' medical care, chiropractic, the use of non-physicians in care, changing ideologies among physicians, and the impact of health education. A variety of analytical perspectives are used to evaluate the many issues raised, ranging from a highly critical Marxist commentary on fundamental flaws in the U.S. health system to a pluralist analysis of how the current system might be made to work better.
Is there anyone who does not imagine the moment of their death? Who is unaware of their steady march to the endline? By suppressing and denying death, Westerners overlook the positive side of death anxiety. This ethnography fills this lacuna by describing a colorful and rich “death culture” among survivors of Holocaust and war who endure their last palpitations of life in a Tel Aviv old-age home. Unable to suppress the consciousness of end-of-life, the protagonists climb a “staircase to heaven” among different fields of existence. Resourcefully they transform their anxiety and suffering into paths of choice—comforting each other, filling their days with acts of respect and unity, and replacing all-consuming individualism with social existentialism and Judeo-Christian religious ideas. This book holds us up to an existential mirror that bridges old and young, a geriatric institution and a concentration camp, and natural death and tragic death induced by terrorism.
These classic and contemporary essays explore the broad range of structural and social contexts of death. They cover issues including the psychology, sociology and ethics of death and dying.
