Full Description
Old age is no place for sissies! exclaimed Bette Davis. This has always been true, but with the challenges of our current society, it has become even more poignant.
Transitions, in and of themselves, are confounding and challenging to navigate! While transitions can be difficult for anyone, for a number of reasons they often pose great problems for older adults within North America.
The NEW third edition of Older Adults: Understanding and Facilitating Transitions illustrates the complexities of these transitions faced by older adults and their family members and offers ideas for nurses, social workers, chaplains, and other health and human service professionals in working with vulnerable aging individuals.
Written by educators and authors with extensive experience working with older adults in many different sites, including community agencies, hospitals, and hospice, Older Adults: Understanding and Facilitating Transitions:
Addresses transitions such as coping with chronic illness, retirement, illnesses, relocations (e.g. moves to facilities), and the final transition, dying and death.
Incorporates within each chapter, websites, references and a case example that illustrates the challenges of transition, as well as how health and human service professionals can assess and intervene.
Discuses issues of meaning and purpose that may arise through these transitions, as well as the challenges experienced by families of older adults assisting their family members.
Features a chapter that analyzes offer future directions for research and professional practice that may benefit older adults (and their family members) as they experience the challenges of later life.
Integrates a mixture of the authors' personal and professional experiences.
Is easy to adopt! Learning activities, PowerPoint?® presentations, and multiple choice questions are provided to adopting instructors.
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1 Introduction
Our Changing Understanding of Human Transition
How Transitions are Conceptualized
Domains of Transition
Coping With Transitions
Factors That Influence the Transition Experience
Assessment and Interventions During Transitions
Chapter 2 Transitions and Older Adults: An Overview
Why This Is an Important Topic
What Are the Transitions Faced by Older Adults?
The Complexities of Transitions in Older Adulthood
Underlying Assumptions in Working With Older Adults
Challenges for Health and Human Service Professionals
Chapter 3 Health Transitions in Older Adults
Physical Illness: Chronic
Chronic Pain
Mental Illness
Medication Usage and Addictions
Framework Within Which to Understand Illness
Assessment and Intervention
Chapter 4 Housing Transitions
The Concept of Home
Global Perspective
Housing Options in Later Life
Theory and Research That Underlies Our Understanding of Transitions
Interventions to Promote Positive Transition Experiences
Chapter 5 Existential Transitions
Development of Personhood
Existential Transitions in Older Adults
Interventions to Address Existential Issues in Older Adults
Existential Work for Professionals
Chapter 6 Death: The Final Transition
Myths About Dying in Advancing Years
Issues Related to Dying for Older Adults
Issues for Family Members
Ethical Issues
Chapter 7 The Family
Definition of the Family
Developmental Tasks of an Aging Family
Challenges in Working With the Family
Principles in Assessment and Intervention With Families
Chapter 8 Future Directions
Education for Current and Future Health and Human Service Professionals
Services in the CommUnity
Housing Options
Support for Families (Caregivers)
Advocacy: By Older Adults for Older Adults and the Vulnerable
Afterword
Index
