Making Gray Gold: Narratives of Nursing Home Care

This first hand report on the work of nurses and other caregivers in a nursing home is set powerfully in the context of wider political, economic, and cultural forces that shape and constrain the quality of care for America's elderly. Diamond demonstrates in a compelling way the price that business-as-usual policies extract from the elderly as well as those whose work it is to care for them.

In a society in which some two million people live in 16,000 nursing homes, with their numbers escalating daily, this thought-provoking work demands immediate and widespread attention.

"[An] unnerving portrait of what it's like to work and live in a nursing home. . . . By giving voice to so many unheard residents and workers Diamond has performed an important service for us all."—Diane Cole, New York Newsday

"With Making Gray Gold, Timothy Diamond describes the commodification of long-term care in the most vivid representation in a decade of round-the-clock institutional life. . . . A personal addition to the troublingly impersonal national debate over healthcare reform."—Madonna Harrington Meyer, Contemporary Sociology

The author's sympathetic account of nursing-home residents and their caregivers is energized by his own experience as a certified nursing assistant in three Chicago nursing homes. In an environment shaped by profit-driven managers and government regulators and where kindness, common sense, and good humor are, unfortunately, not easily quantified and regulated, Diamond describes how residents and workers share common experiences of poverty, powerlessness, and regimentation. He recounts their struggles, frequently with grace and courage, to maintain their dignity and independence. A scholarly but accessible writer, Diamond concludes with recommendations for change. Appropriate for both general and academic collections concerned with healthcare issues.
- Kathy Arsenault, Univ. of South Florida-St. Petersburg Lib.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.