1st Edition

Grief Education for Caregivers of the Elderly

By Harold G Koenig, Junietta B Mccall Copyright 1999
    202 Pages
    by Routledge

    202 Pages
    by Routledge

    Through firsthand accounts and research, Grief Education for Caregivers of the Elderly focuses on the education, training, and support of individuals who care for the elderly. This book provides caregivers with methods to cope with grief and loss and will help educators design programs that meet the needs of their consumers: the elderly and their families, friends, and service providers. From Grief Education for Caregivers of the Elderly, you'll learn how to cope with the stress and emotions of caregiving and improve the quality of services to your patients.

    With an emphasis on caregivers of the institutionalized elderly and the special services provided by clergy, chaplains, and pastoral counselors, Grief Education for Caregivers of the Elderly offers the caregiver or educator several model workshops focusing on grief, loss, and bereavement care. Grief Education for Caregivers of the Elderly contains proven methods and strategies that will sharpen and enhance your caregiving skills, including:

    • focusing on the emotional responses and phases of dying, including denial, anger, and acceptance, to help patients deal with death
    • considering physical and administrative atmosphere and your elderly population when setting goals and designing workshops to provide optimal patient/resident care
    • discussing the themes of grief and loss, stress management, handling change, and promoting self-care for caregivers in workshops and through self-evaluations
    • developing workshops that open with grief history surveys and attitude checklists, discuss normative development and issues of old age, and have themes based on the biological, psychosocial, and spiritual needs of the elderly person
    • providing caregivers with an opportunity to practice what they have learned through case studies, simulated role play, open discussions, and care plan designing
    • thinking about your own mortality and learning about your feelings and ideas of growing old
    Utilized at a psychiatric nursing home facility of New Hampshire Hospital, the workshop exercises in Grief Education for Caregivers of the Elderly have allowed caregivers to express personal feelings; talk about beliefs and experiences; learn about biological, psychosocial, and spiritual processes of grief and phases of bereavement; and apply these understandings and insights into typical caregiving situations. Grief Education for the Caregivers of the Elderly gives you the framework for such a program, using vignettes, composite case material, poetry, and a holistic approach to health care to emphasize the importance of your emotional health and enhanced care of the elderly.

    Contents Acknowledgments
    • Introduction
    • An Old Woman's Story
    • Beginning Assumptions
    • The Role of Personal Experience
    • The Role of Grief Education
    • Concerns About Aging
    • Historical Trends and Eldercare
    • The Grief Education Workshop Format
    • An Overview of This Book
    • Chapter 1: The Challenge of Grief Education for Caregivers of the Institutionalized Elderly
    • Grief and Loss Support Services Needed
    • The Scope of the Need
    • A Mandate for Grief Education
    • The Goal of Grief Education
    • Grief Education Objectives
    • Chapter 2: Aging and the Elderly
    • The Development of Life Span Perspective
    • Characteristics of Old Age
    • Definitions of Aging
    • The Grief of Growing Old
    • A Description of the Aging Process
    • Explanatory Theories of Aging
    • Chapter 3: Bereavement and the Elderly
    • Universal Bereavement Responses
    • General Observations
    • Why Do We Grieve?
    • Grief as Normal Life Crisis
    • Bereavement Study
    • Types of Loss
    • The Tasks of Mourning
    • Grief Work: How Long?
    • Factors That Affect the Course of Grief
    • Phases of Bereavement
    • Effects of Bereavement in Elderly
    • Chapter 4: Death and Dying and the Elderly
    • Death and Society
    • Dying and the Individual
    • Death and Dying: A Developmental Point of View
    • Death and Dying Responses
    • Dying with Integrity
    • The Dying Process
    • Tasks of the Dying Person
    • Complications
    • Death and Dying and Elderly Persons
    • Death and the Life Cycle
    • Chapter 5: Workshop Design--A Successful Model
    • Workshop Expectations
    • A Successful Program
    • Phases of Workshop Design
    • Generalizations of Learning
    • Summary: The Ten Commandments of Grief Education
    • Chapter 6: Caregivers: Practitioners, Helpers, and Companions
    • Who Is a Caregiver?
    • Developing a Continuum of Care Model
    • Continuum of Care Contexts
    • Caregiver Frustrations
    • Obstacles to Caregiving
    • To Help or Not To Help?
    • Predisposition to Assist Aging and Dying Elderly Persons
    • General Caregiving Intervention Goals
    • Stage-Appropriate Objectives
    • The Role of the Grief Counselor
    • Counseling and the Elderly
    • The Caregiver and Self-Care
    • Chapter 7: Clergy as Caregivers
    • Pastoral Care Traditions
    • Community Traditions of Pastoral Care
    • Pastoral Caregiving Experiences
    • Assessment of Clergy as Caregivers
    • Problems with the Pastoral Caregiving Task
    • A Definition of Pastoral Care to the Grieving and Elderly
    • The Goal of Pastoral Caregiving
    • Pastoral Objectives for Working with the Aged, Bereaved, and Dying
    • General Pastoral Care Strategies Reviewed
    • The Art of Pastoral Caregiving: Learnings from Ministry with Elderly People
    • The Pastoral Caregiver as Recovered Healer
    • Chapter 8: Envisioning Eldercare: The Next Fifty Years
    • The Future of Eldercare
    • Challenge One: Understanding the Realities of Old Age
    • Challenge Two: Creating Spaces for Ethical Dialogue
    • Challenge Three: Conserving Resources and Enhancing Quality Care
    • Challenge Four: Using Education As a Resource
    • Challenge Five: Caregiving When All Our Houses Are Full of the Elderly
    • Conclusion
    • Appendixes: Workshops
    • Workshop 1. Attachment, Loss, and the Process of Mourning
    • Objectives
    • Schedule
    • Personal Grief History
    • Grief and Loss Case Study
    •  Participant Evaluation Form
    • Workshop 2. Bereavement
    • Schedule
    • Aging: As I Imagine Myself
    • Behaviors That Encourage Expression of Needs
    • Bereavement Workshop Evaluation Form
    •  Workshop 3. Grief and Loss
    •  Schedule
    • Death and Dying: Attitudes Checklist
    •  Workshop 4. The Art of Caring for the Dying Person
    •  About the Workshop
    • Schedule
    •  Registration Form
    •  Workshop 5. When Someone Dies
    • Workshop Objectives
    •  Schedule
    •  Caregiv

    Biography

    Koenig, Harold G; Mccall, Junietta B