The Human Factor in Nursing Home Care

In an attempt to challenge the prevailing attitudes and images of nursing homes in America, the authors have written a touching book about the people and the relationships that are a part of nursing home care. Their extensive study of and experience with nursing home residents and caregivers reveal that our negative and often painful thoughts about nursing homes are not always well-founded. The authors effectively use monologue and dialogue to take the reader into the world of the nursing home to observe the work of the nursing home staffs, from administrators to housekeepers, as they become surrogate families and friends of the patients. Most moving are the thoughts and words of the residents themselves, especially as they describe their initial horror and anger at being in the nursing home, and their feelings of abandonment and loss of self-esteem. Valuable for both undergraduate and graduate courses in nursing, social work, psychology, death and dying, pastoral care and counseling, this comprehensive volume is useful as a primary or supplementary text.BACKCOVER COPY In an attempt to challenge the prevailing attitudes and images of nursing homes in America, David Oliver and Sally Tureman have written a touching book about the people and the relationships that are a part of nursing home care. Their extensive study of and experience with nursing home residents and caregivers reveal that our negative and often painful thoughts about nursing homes are not always well-founded. The authors effectively use monologue and dialogue to take the reader into the world of the nursing home to observe the work of the nursing home staffs, from administrators to housekeepers, as they become surrogate families and friends of the patients. Most moving are the thoughts and words of the residents themselves, especially as they describe their initial horror and anger at being in the nursing home, and their feelings of abandonment and loss of self-esteem. The Human Factor in Nursing Home Care provides a new and refreshing perspective of those who provide care in nursing homes and those who receive it. And, in the end, it challenges the reader to consider his or her own images of aging and of dying.

David Oliver, Sally Tureman

Contents Preface - Introduction - Part I: Engagement - The Encounter - The Executioners - The Prisoners in 107A and 216A - Part II: Players - The Performers in the Drama - The Caregivers - Administrators, Supervisors, and the Underground - Part III: Transformation - Celebration - Discoveries - A New Vision