Older Adults: Understanding and Facilitating Transitions

Old age is no place for sissies! exclaimed Bette Davis. This has always been true, but with the challenges of our current society, it has become even more poignant. Transitions, in and of themselves, are confounding and challenging to navigate! While transitions can be difficult for anyone, for a number of reasons they often pose great problems for older adults within North America. The NEW third edition of Older Adults: Understanding and Facilitating Transitions illustrates the complexities of these transitions faced by older adults and their family members and offers ideas for nurses, social workers, chaplains, and other health and human service professionals in working with vulnerable aging individuals. Written by educators and authors with extensive experience working with older adults in many different sites, including community agencies, hospitals, and hospice, Older Adults: Understanding and Facilitating Transitions: Addresses transitions such as coping with chronic illness, retirement, illnesses, relocations (e.g. moves to facilities), and the final transition, dying and death. Incorporates within each chapter, websites, references and a case example that illustrates the challenges of transition, as well as how health and human service professionals can assess and intervene. Discuses issues of meaning and purpose that may arise through these transitions, as well as the challenges experienced by families of older adults assisting their family members. Features a chapter that analyzes offer future directions for research and professional practice that may benefit older adults (and their family members) as they experience the challenges of later life. Integrates a mixture of the authors' personal and professional experiences. Is easy to adopt! Learning activities, PowerPoint? presentations, and multiple choice questions are provided to adopting instructors.