Convalescent Hospitals

Before starting my field research, I read a highly recommended book Making Gray Gold: Narratives of Nursing Home Care by Timothy Diamond. In the book, Diamond recounts his experiences as a nursing assistant in various nursing homes in the United States. The author, a male, completed training as a nursing assistant and went "undercover" while gathering information for this ethnographic study.

The main theme of Making Gray Gold is that nursing homes are bureaucratic institutions that could use a healthy dose of "mother's wit." Mother's wit describes the m

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home residents and the nursing assistants that I was moved to tears. I suppose I identified with the nursing home situation because in my culture, such facilities are not as widespread as they are in the United States. Most foreign cultures are based on extended families and the elderly are kept in the family residence as long as medically feasible. On the other hand, once immigrants move to the United States they assimilate many aspects of American culture, and the institutionalization of the elderly is one aspect that is gaining popularity. Armed with this general background about what goes on in nursing homes, I called several in the area and asked if I could visit. My source for identifying nursing homes was the Yellow Pages. I called under the pretext that I was looking for a place to stay for an elderly relative. All three homes I contacted were receptive to visitors but only one fit into my schedule, Treehaven Manor. Treehaven Manor is located in a one-story, gated complex on a busy street. The grounds are neatly landscaped. The building appeared to be about 50 years old, but in good repair. As I entered the main building I saw staff helping some elderly residents board a van with a logo that read "Treehaven Ma
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Approximate Word count = 1623
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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