Mixing personal history, interviewee voices, and academic theory from the fields of care work, the sociology of work, medical sociology, and nursing, Taking Care of Our Own introduces us to the hidden world of family caregivers. Using a multidimensional approach, Sherry N. Mong seeks to understand and analyze the types of skilled work that family caregivers do, the processes through which they learn and negotiate new skills, and the meanings that both caregivers and nurses attach to their care work. Taking Care of Our Own is based on sixty-two in-depth interviews with family caregivers, home and community health care nurses, and other expert observers to provide a lens through which in-home care processes are analyzed, while also exploring how caregivers learn necessary procedures. Further, Mong examines the emotional labor of caregiving, as well as the identities of caregivers and nurses who are key players in the labor process, and gives attention to the ways in which the labor is transferred from medical professionals to family caregivers.

Loss and Grief: Personal Stories of Doctors and Other Healthcare Professionals is a unique collection of personal narratives that chronicle the journeys of doctors and other healthcare professionals who have been personally impacted by life-altering losses. Edited by internationally recognized practitioners of supportive care medicine and grief counseling, these are unflinching, first-person narratives of authors walking in their own shoes. The narratives reveal losses of cherished loved ones, integrity, dreams, naive views of colleagues, and the lack of institutional support for these inevitable experiences. Although the narrators are well-established leaders in their fields, serious loss brought each back to the exposed core of their most basic selves. They learned that the professional veneer was too thin to be instructive or protective. Readers might resonate with their own painful experiences and memories, and others might wonder how they will imagine their own future when these inevitable aspects of being human-loss and grief-strike them, too. In Loss and Grief, it is our hope that such openly shared feelings of isolation and suffering will humanize the loss experience, ignite prospective discussions, and illuminate opportunities for education, research and interventions to prepare us for multiple loss experiences endemic to life.

Enjoy the benefits and reduced stress that come from reconnecting people with dementia to lifelong activities they love. Using a strength-based approach, this guide shows step by step how to design meaningful, individualized activities that can be performed by a person with memory loss as independently as possible. Helpful assessment and implementation tools guide your efforts to identify a personaEURO (TM)s optimal leisure activities and then tailor them to current skill levels. The resulting activity plans will effectively promote the well-being and self-identity of each person with memory loss. Downloadable resources include: Communication strategies and conversations starters Assessment forms Step-by-step implementation guides Sample activities adapted for early, middle, and late stages of dementia.

Working with older people in care can be challenging and frustrating, especially when they behave in ways that seem irrational, aggressive, or unreasonably repetitive, and nothing you can do seems to help. The authors of this useful and practical book explain how to understand the difficult and annoying ways in which older people in care can behave, (especially people with dementia), how to stay calm and kind, and how to solve the problems they can create. With many examples of everyday challenges and how to deal with them, this book has the potential to change your working life.

Massage techniques are widely and effectively used in treatment of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) to address sensory issues, motor problems and touch receptivity. However, the variety of different styles of massage available often leaves parents baffled and unsure about which touch therapy treatment is best for their child. This practical guide explains how massage works, how the body senses touch, and how touch therapy can benefit children with ASDs. The book goes on to describe exactly what each type of massage entails and covers anatomy-oriented massages, energy-based massages and therapeutic bodywork, helping readers to tell Reiki from reflexology, a Swedish from a sports massage, or tuina from a Thai massage. With recommendations for selecting the right style of massage, advice on locating a practitioner, and tips on preparing a child with an ASD for massage, this book is the perfect resource to find a therapy - or combination of therapies - to suit the individual needs of each child. This book will be essential reading for all parents and caregivers interested in the benefits of therapeutic massage and bodywork for children and adolescents with ASDs, and practitioners looking at alternatives for therapeutic intervention.