The nursing assistant has a special and vital role in nursing home care. Providing continuous and close relationships with the nursing home residents, the assistance is challenged daily to solve the numerous problems that arise in working with the elderly. It is frequently the assistant who must find ways to help when residents refuse to get up, become incontinent, cannot find the dining room, cannot sleep, grieve over their families' failure to visit, argue with other residents, make excessive demands for personal care, imagine illnesses and demons, and fear death.This book is designed to help the nursing assistant and other elder care providers develop and refine the needed understanding of the elderly and how to work with them. In the everyday context of the nursing home and its residents, it identifies categories of helping opportunities, presents over 100 case studies to illustrate them, and suggests techniques that nursing assistants may use to make the most of these opportunities. The vivid, dramatic, and realistic cases are drawn from extensive field observations of nursing home residents and the work of nursing assistants, as well as from many in-depth interviews. An indispensable training and discussion guide for nursing assistants; for nurses, social workers, and other staff members of nursing homes who train and supervise nursing assistants; and for those who design and manage elderly care programs. It is also an essential resource for sociologists, psychologists, and social workers who specialize in aging or who teach courses in gerontology.
