Celia Berdes

Subjective Quality of Life of Polish, Polish-Immigrant, and Polish-American Elderly.

This study compared the subjective quality of life of elderly Poles living in Poland, and Polish immigrants and Polish-American ethnics living in Chicago. The article is a secondary data analysis of a study that replicated an earlier study conducted in Poland. The study uses three measures of quality of life used in the earlier study—self assessments of health, initiative, and fulfillment of plans and wishes—and develops a composite measure. The results showed that Polish-American ethnic elderly had significantly better subjective quality of life than Polish-immigrant elderly, and Polish-immigrant elderly had significantly better subjective quality of life than elderly Poles in Poland. These conclusions lend support to the idea the U.S.-born elderly people and elderly immigrants to the United States have access to an American cultural construct of “vital aging.” However, immigration is also a risk factor worthy of being added to the traditional “triple jeopardy.”

Patient safety in the nursing home: how nursing staff assess and communicate about change in condition.

Nursing homes must improve quality of care even as it becomes increasingly complex, and patient safety science may provide a helpful paradigm. Training materials are needed to build staff capacity for clinical assessment and communication, thereby improving care processes. Designed to develop curricular materials, this study used focus groups to determine how experienced nurses and aides assess and communicate about resident clinical changes. Four focus groups were conducted, and interviews were analyzed for themes in an iterative process by multidisciplinary team members. Staff reported that consistent caregiving enables detection of subtle clinical changes; aides further noted the importance of affective bonding. Aides and nurses alike regarded all clinical changes as potentially significant, while nursing staff lacked a consistent approach to assessment. Using a patient safety framework, structural changes and process elements were identified as important topics for further training to support clinical communication and improve resident and facility outcomes.

Generativity and Caregiving: Two Intergenerational Documentaries Show How They Are Linked

Generativity has been defined as “a concern for people besides self and family that usually develops during middle age; especially a need to nurture and guide younger people and contribute to the next generation” (http:// www.merriam-webster.com/medical/generativity). The term comes from the eight-stage theory of human development of Erik Erikson (1959; 1983/1998), where generativity is described as the seventh stage and the work of midlife. Generativity has been most fully described in the works of Kotre (1998), McAdams and de St. Aubin (1998), and de St. Aubin, McAdams, and Kim (2003). Most recently in this journal, Pratt (2013) pointed out that generativity is not achieved by all older people and outlined how its development might be fostered by intergenerational programs. The concept of generativity is part of the welcome theory that personality development can continue throughout the life span. Yet, it remains an elusive concept, not measurable or even the subject of much empirical research. While many believe that generativity is an essential building block to successful aging, we do not yet understand why some people seem to have it in abundance and others seem to lack it. Generativity traditionally refers to contributing to the future good of younger people outside of one’s own family. Yet, one finds enormous amounts of similar expressions of generativity when middle-aged people provide care for their elders within the family. This finding leads us to wonder how far generativity and caregiving overlap, in effect constituting a related new concept: intergenerativity.

Intergenerational Documentaries Can Be Anecdotal, Descriptive, or Analytic

The crop of recent intergenerational documentaries, films made by someone in one generation of a family about someone in another generation of the same family, illustrate three distinct types of such documentaries. These films are in the tradition of earlier seminal documentaries made in the United States but come from new filmmakers in various parts of the globe. In each of these intergenerational documentaries, a younger director turns the camera on his parent or grandparent. What varies among the films are their aim and focus: they may be anecdotal, descriptive, or analytic. In the anecdotal documentary, the single focus of the film is the elder himself or herself. My nominee for best recent film in this category is Teta, Alf Marra (Grandma, A Thousand Times), directed by Mahmoud Kaabour, a 2010 United Arab Emirates-Qatar-Lebanon co-production. The filmmaker focuses on his grandmother, 83-year-old Beirut resident Fatima el Ghoul. In a delicate and playful way, he honors her illiterate yet insightful worldview. The film also depicts her family roles as the longtime widow of his namesake grandfather, mother of six and grandmother, as well as her emotional role as the home base and inexhaustible heart of the extended family. Kaabour switches easily from behind the camera (while interviewing his grandmother) to in front of the camera (interacting with her) and finally even to sequences in which he impersonates his grandfather and involves his grandmother in fanciful reenactments of events from her younger years. The film is reminiscent of Alan Berliner’s 1991 film, Intimate Strangers, about a grandfather who absented himself from his family, and Alex Halpern’s Nine Good Teeth (2003), about his Italian-American grandmother. Kaabour’s affectionate portrayal of Teta Fatima skillfully uses music composed by his grandfather as well as original music composed for the film to unify the film. He draws on the views of others, Teta’s relatives and neighbors, as additions to his own view and, by including footage of his grandmother’s participation in his own wedding, aptly depicts intergenerational continuity between his grandmother and his wife. I have rarely seen so much love expressed on film without falling into sentiment; I have rarely seen a film so free in technique and yet controlled in execution.

The third congress of the international psychogeriatric association

Summary Not all topics could be included due to the limitation of space. A special issue of the Third Congress will include a two to three page summary of each of one hundred selected presentations. The Fourth Congress of The International Psychogeriatric Association is set for Tokyo, Japan from September 5-8, 1989. Information concerning the summary publication and the Tokyo meeting can be obtained by contacting: IPA, c/o Sanford Finkel, M.D., 505 N. Lake Shore Drive, Suite 1706, Chicago, IL 60611, telephone (312) 329-0325.[/AB]

Grandchildren Explore the Echoes of their Prominent Forebears

Bell, G. L. (Producer & Director). (2011). The Bellman Equation [Motion Picture]. Available from www.bellmanequation.com or Amazon. Spender, C. (Director & Producer), Bonelli, V. (Producer), & Teeman, A. (CoProducer). (2011). Without Gorky [Motion Picture]. United Kingdom: Peacock Pictures. Available through Vimeo on Demand. http://arshilegorkyfoundation.org/gor kys-life/without-gorky Stuart, Z., & Thompson, K. (Directors). (2011). Savage Memory [Motion Picture]. United States: Sly Productions. Available from www.savagememory.com or Amazon.

Innovative approaches to psychogeriatric services

ConclusionSome of these studies, as well as other papers and presentations, will be published bySpringer as the proceedings of the IPA under the titleClinical and Scientific Psychogeriatrics.In the meantime, significant planning has already been undertaken for the Fourth Congress, scheduled for September 4–6, 1989 in Tokyo, Japan. Regional workshops have been scheduled for April 28–29, 1988 in Lausanne, Switzerland and August 26–28, 1988 in Budapest, Hungary.