Synopses & Reviews
Centers for Ending examines the challenges that the United States faces as its population ages in the coming years. This concise volume combines a critical review and analysis of health care policies and practices with the reflections of one currently living in and experiencing personally the issues of which he speaks. Centers for Ending provides readers with the unique opportunity to examine possible challenges confronting the nation given its impending surge in demand for facilities and personnel care for the elderly.
Dr. Sarason uses his personal experience in an extended care facility to depict several of these challenges, including inadequacy in the number of nursing facilities, in general, and affordable facilities, specifically; in the training and supervision of the paraprofessionals primarily responsible for the delivery of care; and in the sensitivity of the medical professionals responsible for prescribing and monitoring care. Using his status as a resident as well as a patient in an expensive, reportedly high-quality facility, Dr. Sarason makes explicit the risks that the nationa (TM)s citizens, elderly as well as their families, face unless significant changes occur in this aspect of the nationa (TM)s health care system.
What comes through most clearly is the extent to which those delivering care lose sight of the fact that people rather than symptoms and diagnoses are the recipients of those services. Dr. Sarasona (TM)s poignant descriptions of unintended albeit hurtful interactions between providers and recipients will sensitize readers to examine carefully the nursing care options available for themselves or their loved ones. In many respects, this volume provides the nation and its citizens with a valuable peek into their futures.
Review
From the reviews: "Written as an educational tool for families and/or caregivers who are providing care for an elderly person, this book would be a great reference for nursing homes to teach caregivers how it feels to be dependent on others. It also provides insights into regulatory changes needed to improve elders' psychosocial satisfaction and autonomy when dependent upon others. ... The author is an expert in the psychosocial needs of people ... . The author's real life experiences lend considerable weight to the book." (Katherine L. Aguilar, Doody's Review Service, October, 2011)
Synopsis
This book combines a critical analysis of health care policy and practice with the reflections of one personally experiencing the issues of which he speaks. The book examines the impending surge in demand for facilities and personnel to care for the elderly.
Synopsis
As people live longer and health care costs continue to rise and fewer doctors choose to specialize in geriatrics, how prepared is the United States to care for its sick and elderly? According to veteran psychologist Seymour Sarason's eloquent and compelling new book, the answer is: inadequately at best. And rarely discussed among the grim statistics is the psychosocial price paid by nursing home patients, from loneliness and isolation to depression and dependency. In Centers for Ending, Dr. Sarason uses his firsthand experience as both practitioner and patient in senior facilities to reveal wide-ranging professional and moral issues affecting this seemingly familiar terrain. Insensitive medical personnel, poorly trained nurses and aides, indifferent administrators, and a prevailing culture content with treating "bodies" instead of human beings are identified as contributing factors. Drawing on America's rich history of large-scale solutions to social problems, Dr. Sarason offers penetrating insights and bold suggestions in such areas as: The widening care gap between haves and have-nots.Why professional caregivers fail to understand patients.The nursing home resident as immigrant.Why previous reform efforts have not worked.The need for a Presidential commission for the elderly.The scenario if conditions are allowed to remain as they are or worsen. This concise volume is essential reading for researchers, graduate students, professionals, practitioners, and policy makers across such fields as geriatric medicine, health psychology, social work, public health, and public policy.
About the Author
Since retiring in 1989 after 45 years
Table of Contents
Series Foreword by Rosalynn Carter.- Foreword by Saul B. Cohen.- Themes of the Book.- Becoming a Resident in a Total Care Facility.- Residents as Immigrants.- Some Aspects of Organizational Craziness.- Two Months in the Nursing Home.- Planning Programs: Social Security and Head Start.- The Haves and the Have Nots.- The Need for a Presidential Commission: Some Caveats.- On the Uses of History.- Epilogue.- References.- About the Author.