e foregoing statistics pertain only to those older people whose alcohol abuse has reached sufficient proportions to produce the need for hospitalization. It is quite likely that for every one of those hospitalized, there are other older people at home abusing alcohol but who have not yet reached the point where they need hospitalization. In other words, the scope of elderly alcohol abuse is quite likely even more substantial than the high rates observed in Adams, Yan, Barboriak and Rimm's (1993) study.
As noted by Mathre (1994), community health nurses constitute one of the primary groups providing assistance to older people with alcohol problems. However, according to Parette, Hourcade and Parette (1990), many nurses have dysfunctional attitudes toward geriatric alcoholism. In this regard, the authors report that there are both conscious and unconscious negative and debilitating attitudes and predispositions that may be held by nurses which impairs their ability to provide caring services to the elderly al
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