The Caregiving Dilemma: Work in an American Nursing Home. Nancy Foner (original) (raw)

Medical Anthropology Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness Neurodegeneration and the Intersubjectivities of Care

Medical Anthropology, 2019

Caring for a family member or friend with a serious health condition is a common feature of social life. Often, such care is framed as a burden, an unwelcome rupture in the fabric of everyday life. We draw on research conducted in Australia and the UK to examine care in the everyday lives of people living with and caring for neurodegenerative diseases and to trouble care as a burden. Participants in our studies mobilized practices of care to collaboratively produce a "good life". We argue that above all, care is a relational, enacted practice requiring examination in its local context.

A Caretaker’s Experience with Medicalized Aging: Reflections on the Ever-Present Ending

DESCRIPTION Presented at the 7th Annual Meetings of the Interdisciplinary Coalition of North American Phenomenologists (ICNAP) May 22, 2015 This paper employs a hermeneutic phenomenology to explore how one family member with care-taking responsibilities for her elders contributed to a system and cycle of medicalized aging. Data consisted of archives from journal entries, care directive documents, and protocols developed by the researcher from 2001 to 2015 in conjunction with caretaking responsibilities. The results are intended to inform a generation that is now caring for elderly loved ones, for those fortunate to reach that inevitable phase themselves, and to the various professionals who support the aging process.

Culture of nursing homes : an ethnomethodological study / Amanda Jane Ruler

2000

For the 1990s life expectancy at birth for Aboriginal and Torres Strait lslanders was up to 20 years shorter than that for non-indigenous Australians. Because they have a shorter life expectancy and a higher incidenceof illness and disability than other Australians, indigenous people tend to make use of aged care services at an earlier age. This sector of the population tend to use cornmunity based services in preference to residential services as they are more likely to wish to remain on the land with their families in old age (Australian Bureau of Statistics and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare,l9ÐT). The health status of indigenous Australians tends to be much poorer than their nonindigenous counterparts. They are two to three times more likely to be hospitalised. They are at higher risk of illness due to factors such as poor nutrition, obesity, substance abuse' exposure to violence, inadequate housing and education (Australian Bureau of Statistics and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 1997)-Voluntary Work And Older Australians Voluntary work is a major source of satisfaction for many older Australians. Included in this definition of voluntary work is providing informal assistance to family members, to friends and neighbours and more formally to others through an organisation or group. 19 percent of the total Australian population aged 15 years and older were engaged in some form of voluntary work in the 1995 AustralianBureau of Statistics Survey of Voluntary \ilork for the previous year (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1995b). Of these people, 24 percent were aged 55 years or over. Twenty percent of those were aged 55-& years and 17 percent were aged

Multiplicity and encounters of cultures of care in advanced ageing

2020

The demographic of an ageing population in many countries is increasing the numbers of elderly who are resident in care homes especially in parts of South East Asia. The investments made into care-related activities in residential homes for the elderly largely reflect a medical approach in which priority is given to physical care through bodily maintenance and limited physical exercise, and only limited resources are allocated to other intellectual or imaginative engagements. The study introduces a very different culture of caring practice into a Singaporean nursing home through an arts-based programme in which the medical benefits are secondary to an assertion that the imagination, creativity and self-expression should be intrinsic to how we conceive of human thriving, emancipation and vitality. This difference of purpose draws our attention to the specific practice of the arts practitioner in how they care for and manage the activities, the space and the atmosphere of the arts ses...