Lorin A. Baumhover

GERONTOLOGICAL EDUCATION FOR STUDENTS IN NURSING AND SOCIAL WORK: KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDES, AND PERCEIVED BARRIERS

Most health care and social service providers are routinely required to work with elderly clients and clients’ aging family members. Research suggests that students entering these professions have knowledge deficits and lack positive attitudes toward older people. Few prefer to work with aging clients. Professional curricula are not providing students with adequate training to serve the current needs of this population, much less to meet projected increases in demand for services. To examine this issue, 67 masters students in nursing and social work completed questionnaires assessing (1) knowledge about aging, (2) attitudes toward old people, and (3) perceived barriers to gerontological education. Results confirmed the existence of knowledge deficits among respondents. Attitudes tended to be neutral rather than strongly positive or negative. Knowledge scores were related to attitudes, to respondents’ ages, and to their having lived in households with older relatives. Nursing students identified the great...

Abuse and Neglect of the Elderly: Are Emergency Department Personnel Aware of Mandatory Reporting Laws?

Alabama emergency department personnel were surveyed in 1988 concerning elder abuse and Alabamas mandatory reporting and protective services law. Most ED personnel did not understand the requirements of the law. While emergency physicians, registered nurses, and licensed practical nurses had seen cases of elder abuse in their careers, differences existed in their satisfaction with the disposition of cases reported to state authorities. Licensed practical nurses and physicians reported greater satisfaction with the response received; registered nurses were much less satisfied. However, all accepted responsibility for reporting elder abuse. ED registered nurses and emergency physicians were divided on the degree to which they could diagnose elder abuse, did not believe there were sufficient services to care for those who had been abused, and were unsure whether there were procedures for reporting cases of elder abuse. All ED personnel need to know that cases they report will result in protection of abuse victims.

Police discretion and elder mistreatment: A nested model of observation, reporting, and satisfaction

This study examined police reporting behavior in elder mistreatment (abuse, neglect, and exploitation) cases. Relying on a survey of police officers in Alabama, this research investigates a nested model of mandatory reporting using linear regression techniques. Only about half of all elder mistreatment cases are reported to the proper authorities. Job experience, contact with the elderly, understanding of mistreatment laws, and positive attitudes toward reporting should increase detection, reporting, and overall satisfaction with the system. These causal factors, however, increased detection and reporting, but not satisfaction. Improvements in training and knowledge in elder mistreatment can be counterpro-ductive.

Home-Delivered Mental Health Services for Aged Rural Home Health Care Recipients

Home health care programs are generally able to meet a wide variety of older persons’ medical care needs, but are often unable to provide for the specialized needs of those patients who are experiencing emotional problems. This situation is most problematic in rural communities where services to meet the mental health needs of homebound elders are often not available. This article reports the results of a study that tested the efficacy of providing home-delivered psychotherapy to 78 elderly patients of a rural home health care agency. Patients who completed the brief, task-centered psychotherapeutic intervention reported improvements in their emotional well-being and indicated significant reduction of the problems associated with the target complaints that were the focus of the interventive activities. These results suggest that home-delivered psychotherapeutic interventions may have an important role to play in treating the mental health problems of older, rural, home health care recipients.

Are Health Care Professionals Ready for Alzheimer's Disease: A Comparison of U.S. and Hong Kong Nurses.

The Alzheimers Disease Knowledge Test (ADK) was administered to samples of practicing nurses in the United States and Hong Kong. Nurses experienced with Alzheimers Disease patients, having specific training on AD, and reporting greater knowledge about AD were, in fact, more knowledgeable. Overall, U.S. nurses were significantly more knowledgeable, but exhibited more negative bias than Hong Kong nurses. Findings suggest that nurses in Hong Kong, as well as in the United States, need more training about Alzheimers disease.

The dilemma of elder abuse

The Alabama Protective Services Act of 1976 was designed to protect adults over 18 made vulnerable because of age, mental deficiency, or poor health. All practitioners of the healing arts are mandated to report if there is reasonable cause to believe abuse, neglect, or exploitation has occurred.

Reassessing The Demographic Imperative

Abstract For many years gerontologists have discussed the consequences of advances that have lengthened lives but have been less successful at improving the quality of those lives. While this debate continues, the resulting demographic shift in the age profile of the United States threatens to overwhelm our ability to care for those who most need assistance. In the absence of major policy changes or dramatic medical discoveries, or both, the need for institutional care among the population 85 and older will soon exceed the available resources.

Book Reviews : S. Chambre, Good Deeds in Old Age: Volunteering by the New Leisure Class. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1987. 135 pp.

context, among others, of pointing out that longevity and all its implications for social and medical services are limited to developed nations, but prevail throughout the world, that Dr. Lesnoff-Caravaglia has helped organize the literature on long life in a thoughtful way. In summary, this collection of 19 articles and the introduction by the editor can serve as a useful and well-organized topical reference. It highlights the current state of knowledge within several different professions and disciplines concerning conditions that support quality long life and life expectation.

22.00 cloth

number of both university-based and community-based aging programs throughout the United States. In the South, this rapid growth in programs occurred alongside a marked increase in the number of older people either returning or moving into the Sunbelt. With funding from the Administration on Aging, ACTION, and others, aging programs slowly evolved into something approximating their present form. In the 70’s much emphasis was placed on program development in community settings and on planning for multidisciplinary efforts in university settings. Throughout the country, &dquo;first generation&dquo; leaders attracted followers and peers in efforts to promote agesegregated human services, using mainly federal funds. Their achievements were made, in part, through the Older Americans Act of 1965 and its subsequent amendments, but also through Title XX and SSI, through Medicare, and the RSVP, Foster Grandparent and other programs of ACTION. During this time, many university-based gerontology centers were begun with an interdisciplinary focus, with an eye toward developing gerontology curricula in a variety of departments, and with the hope of encouraging cross-disciplinary research and teaching in gerontology. Against this backdrop, there followed an explosion in the number of