Abstract
Nursing homes face the challenges of providing both medical care and home environments in which elders live. The evolution of long term care has resulted in greater emphasis on nursing homes being institutions rather than homes. Discourse in nursing home care both reflects this and reinforces it. Changing the discourse of nursing home care creates the possibility for more individualized and less pathologically oriented treatment of elders. We report on a program which engages families in creating biographies of nursing home residents. These constructed life stories create new discourses in the nursing home. They can bring family in greater collaboration with nursing home staff and sensitize the nursing home to seeing each resident as uniquely individual. Lessons learned from facilitating these groups are shared and directions for future development described.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 323-335 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Families, Systems and Health |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1999 |