Survival Manual for Elders: Encouraging Elders' Resiliency Potential

Joe B. Adair, Melanie J.D. Adair

Description

Helps seniors and their caregivers successfully navigate the challenges of aging, make informed decisions, and focus on individualized goals of care to promote resiliency and maximum functional potential. A team of physicians, nurses, social workers, psychologists, therapists, chaplains, business and legal experts collaborate on topics such as dignity, health promotion, care choices, common symptoms, medication safety, cognitive and mental health concerns, illness complications, rehabilitation, and recuperation. Discussions of legal advance directives and healthcare finances are particularly helpful in clarifying the maze of choices facing seniors and their caregivers as they negotiate our US industrial, financial, and healthcare complex.

Sujets

• Médecine
• Spécialités médicales
• Health Care Issues
• Health
• Fitness

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781935186328
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

SURVIVAL MANUAL
for elders :
Encouraging Elders’ Resiliency Potential
 
Developed by the steering committee of the:
Southeast Advocacy Center For Elder Rights
A Not-For-Profit Organization dedicated to protecting
the rights and well-being of elders in society
 
This material was written by :
• Melanie Adair, MA, SP – President, New Senior Concepts, LLC, Chattanooga, TN
• Joe B. Adair, Ph.D. – V. President, Senior Housing Alternatives, Inc., Chattanooga, TN
• And Kort Nygard, Ph.D., Regional Vice President, Geropsych/Key Rehab Inc., Murfreesboro, TN
 
With Contributions By:
• Ron Blankenbaker, M.D. - UT Medical School, Assoc. Dean Emeritus, Chattanooga, TN
• Kendra Coulter, Assist. Ex. Director, Summit View Senior Community, Chattanooga, TN
• Marj Flemming, President, Launch Point Leadership Chattanooga, TN
• Mike Gorman, OT, Senior Vice President, Key Rehabilitation, Inc. Murfreesboro, TN
• Ralph Hood, Ph.D., Professor, Dept. of Psychology, UT- Chattanooga
• Jan Irwin, MA. SLP, President, Key Rehabilitation, Inc. Murfreesboro, TN
• Scott Rowe, PT, President, Health South Chattanooga Rehabilitation Hospital, Chattanooga, TN
• Carol Swisher, R.N. – Director of Nursing, Summit View, Chattanooga, TN
 
Waldenhouse Publishers, Inc.
Walden, Tennessee


 
 
 
SURVIVAL MANUAL FOR ELDERS:
Encouraging Elders’ Resiliency Potential
Copyright ©2012 The Southeast Advocacy Center for Elder Rights, Chattanooga, Tennessee. All rights reserved.
E-Book ISBN: 978-1-935186-32-8
Published by: Waldenhouse Publishing, Inc.
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
100 Clegg Street, Signal Mountain, Tennessee, USA 37377
www.waldenhouse.com 888-222-8228
Manufactured in The United States of America
 
NOTE: We hope this little book is helpful to you. It is not intended to replace other medical advice, but rather to help you benefit from what we have found to be important if elders are going to have the opportunity to maximize their potential. Always consult with your own health professional before making any changes in medications and for advice specific to individual medical histories and symptoms.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Words of Praise for Survival Manual For Elders:
Encouraging Elders’ Resiliency Potential
• Adair, Adair, & Nygard and their colleagues at the Southeast Advocacy Center for Elder Rights are right-on with this refreshing person-centric, holistic approach to aging and healthcare choices. If knowledge is power, the insights offered by this book will be a strong ally for seniors and their caregivers to successfully navigate the challenges of aging, making informed decisions and focusing on individualized goals of care. This book should be on every senior’s must read list!   --- James S. Powers MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Geriatric Medicine Program Director, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN
• This book Is long overdue and should be required reading for medical and nursing students, as well as other professionals in this complex maze of elder care. Instead of describing a dismal situation in our industry, the authors have provided hope and how-to's to make caring for an elder a joy rather than a burden. Advocates for our elders are needed, and this book serves that purpose. Thanks for the inspiration. --- Becky A Bowles, MA, CCC/SLP, owner of Sage Senior Services: A Care Management Company, Tulsa, OK.
• As baby-boomers are becoming caretakers to their parents, this book is a must-read. They often make the mistake of assuming that the medical community "knows what is best" for their loved one(s). Children know their parents better than anyone! This book will help the reader be an active and knowledgeable advocate in their health care. --- Debbie Mowery, Family Care-giver, Chattanooga, TN
• Unlike directories of "senior services" that paternalistically list ways in which elders can be assisted, the Survival Manual takes a different view: that elders can have resiliency and agency in navigating options for health and wellness. Rather than telling readers what to think, this manual provides information that empowers elders to ask the tough questions and create true person-directed living. This is much needed "medicine" for an aging society. --- G. Allen Power, MD, is a board certified internist and geriatrician, and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Rochester. He is a Certified Eden Alternative® Educator and a member of the Eden Alternative board of directors. Dr. Power’s book, Dementia beyond Drugs: Changing the Culture of Care won a 2010 Book of the Year Award from the American Journal of Nursing, and a Merit Award from the 2011 National Mature Media Awards.
• Survival Manual for Elders, Encouraging Elders’ Resiliency Potential Melanie Adair, Joe Adair, & Kort Nygard, Southeast Advocacy Center for Elder Rights --- Review by James S. Powers MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Geriatric Medicine Program Director, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashvill,e TN
This book is written by a team of physicians, nurses, social workers, psychologists, therapists, chaplains, business and legal experts. Their collective wisdom concerning aging and passion for person-centric care with promotion of resiliency and maximum functional potential, shine through every page.
The table of contents reads like a list of questions “I wish my doctor had discussed with me.”  Topics such as dignity, health promotion, healthcare choices, advance directives and goals of care, and common symptoms and conditions are accurately and readably discussed and emphasized. The section on levels of care and healthcare finances is particularly helpful in clarifying the maze of choices facing seniors and their caregivers as they negotiate our US industrial, financial, and healthcare complex. Chapters covering medication safety, cognitive and mental health concerns, and illness complications are especially well written.
If knowledge is power, the insights offered by this book will be a strong ally for seniors and their caregivers to successfully navigate the challenges of aging, making informed decisions and focusing on individualized goals of care.
INTRODUCTION
A few years ago, a number of us started seeking a better approach for senior living and senior service delivery. We believed that a stronger emphasis on comprehensive rehabilitation would better enable older adults to bounce back from infirmities. That idea turned out to be accurate and very important. Our experience has now shown that a great many older adults can fully thrive, age in place and avoid ending their lives in an institution that is often dehumanizing and demoralizing. We have learned what it takes to greatly increase the likelihood that injuries or illnesses are just a “bump in the road” rather than the beginning of the end. Older people can and will “bounce back” if given the resources and the encouragement to do so. This is a concept widely known as “resilience.”
There are key concepts of resilience that impact a person’s ability to recover from challenging and often life-changing situations. The same concepts also are important in industries, services, communities, and nations in handling the need to respond to circumstances and changes that have the potential to permanently alter what they look like and how they work.
These key concepts are:
• Believing that there is a meaningful purpose in life;
• Believing that one can influence one’s surroundings and the outcome of events;
• Believing that by combining current “reality” with positive possibility thinking, creative solutions emerge; and
• Believing that both positive and negative experiences lead to learning and growth.
These concepts of Resilience are the underlying principles described in this book. Current Ageist attitudes in society, institutional “one-size-fits-all” approaches to elder care and a lack of coordination in the health care delivery system, contribute to the serious challenges elders face today in not just thriving, but at times in simply surviving. Above all, there is to date a lack of commitment on the part of all those who serve elders and even elders themselves to activate the Resiliency Potential that could make a major difference in elder’s quality of life, level of independence, and overall cost of care.
We have also discovered, throughout recent years, that we were incredibly naive about all the forces that work against giving older adults the opportunity to fully live out their lives with dignity, meaning, and purpose: forces that undermine the Resiliency Potential. Society has adopted a prejudiced attitude about what it means to be old. The approaches to senior care and services that dominate the landscape are rooted in those prejudicial beliefs. Prejudice leads to people being written off when they still have important contributions to make. They too often become victims of chemically induced cognitive impairment through prescription drugs. Far too many are incarcerated against their will and have their rights taken away without due process. Some are simply admitted to long term care facilities, where they spend the rest of their lives, when they still had the potential to regain ability and remain independent. They are even being subjected to excessively strong pain medicines that in many cases ultimately cause them to die – when they had the potential to continue to live and contribute for some time to come
.
The heart of the problem is often complex and may involve a number of factors. These can include:
• Inaccurate information and misunderstanding about normal aging;
• A negative, hopeless attitude about