End-of-Life Stories: Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826126758 ISBN 13: 9780826126757

Publisher: Springer Publishing Company, 2005

Synopsis

End-of-life experiences are often viewed in terms of only one perspective such as medicine. In this volume, a variety of end-of life experiences are presented and each case is analyzed from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. These range across a broad array of the helping professions, and disciplines such as information, law and the social sciences. The book provides a variety of narratives about end-of-life experiences contributed by members of the Wayne State University End-of-Life Interdisciplinary Project. Each of the narratives is then analyzed from several different disciplinary perspectives. These analyzes illustrate how specific end-of-life narratives can be viewed from different dimensions and helps students, researchers and practitioners see the important and varied meanings that end-of-life experiences have at the level of the individual, the family, and the community. The narratives include end-of-life experiences of individuals from a number of diverse backgrounds.

About this title

About the Author

Donald E. Gelfand, PhD, is a professor of sociology at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, and Coordinator of the Wayne State University End-of-Life Interdisciplinary Project (WSU-EOLIP). He has conducted and published research on attitudes of Mexican Americans toward end-of-life care. He has also conducted extensive research on issues of aging among variety of other ethnic groups including African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and individuals from a variety of European backgrounds. The second edition of his book Aging and Ethnicity was published by Springer Publishing Company in 2003.

Richard Raspa, PhD, is a professor and graduate chair in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. In addition to his three other books, he has co-authored Italian Folktales in American: The Verbal Art of an Immigrant Woman, which was awarded the International Botkin Prize by the American Folklore Society for best first book. Raspa had had a Fulbright to Italy, was an Ellsworth Fellow, and regularly presents his research at conferences around the world. His current interests include literature and medicine and organizational folklore.

Sherylyn H. Briller, PhD, is an assistant professor of Anthropology and faculty associate in the Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. A medical anthropologist who specializes in aging, Dr. Briller has a long standing interest in cross-cultural gerontology and has conducted research in Asia and the United States. Her research program focuses on old-age support mechanisms, long-term care, innovative dementia care, and end-of-life issues. She is one of the authors of the four-volume series Creating Successful Dementia Care Settings.

Stephanie Myers Schim, PhD, RN, APRN, CNAA, BC, is an assistant professor in the Wayne State University College of Nursing, Detroit, Michigan. Her practice experience is primarily in home care, public health nursing, and nursing administration. She teaches community health nursing, and nursing administration. She teaches community health nursing and is a certified End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium trainer as well as maintaining board certification in community health nursing and advanced nursing administration. Her research program focuses on cultural competence among health care providers and culturally competent end-of-life care.

Review

"The varied backgrounds arrayed here, the critique of cultural assumptions and attention to notions such as rites of passage help to provide an anthropological sensibility. The editors thus provide a broad, though necessarily not exhaustive canvas of dying by suggesting complex individuals in varied circumstances. Readers are introduced to situations where communication breaks down, where rules are bent to accommodate needs, and in which families and communities display varying degrees of cohesiveness, harmony, and discord. These stories should serve as triggers for intriguing discussion."
--Anthropology and Aging Quarterly, May 2006, Volume 27, Number 2

About this edition

• Publisher: Springer Publishing Company
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0826126758
• ISBN 13: 9780826126757
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Gelfand PhD Donald E., Raspa PhD Richard, Briller PhD Sherylyn H., Myers Schim PhD RN APRN CNAA BC Stephanie