Ageism Education Class

NURSING INNOVATION PROJECT: WRITTEN PROPOSAL

Kimmel (1988) has defined ageism as the use of age as the basis for prejudicial attitudes, discriminatory practices, and institutional policies. Butler (1993), who coined the term, states that ageism is a systematic stereotyping of and discrimination against people because they are old that is visible on both institutional and individual levels. Although the role of ageism differs greatly in different cultures and societies, Kimmel states that psychological research has documented the existence of substantial ageism in the United States.

Moreover, Craft (1993) has stated that the problem is of global proportions. For example, in Austria, older people face discrimination in insurance, health care, housing, public facilities and the media. In Hong, Kong, limited space and the breakup of families into much smaller units has drastically curtailed communication between young and old and industrialization has undermined the value of the experience and skills of the elderly. In Israel, discrimination against older people in the workplace is said to be growing dramatically.

Nor is ageism restricted solely to the misperceptions of young people. According to McEwen (1990), older people themselves believe some of the negative, age-based misconceptions held by the larger society.

The Problem in the Health Care Work Setting

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of influencing knowledge and attitudes of personnel in long-term care facilities. (p. 1114) Section C: Proposed Innovation Procedures Description of the Proposed Innovation The proposed innovation will seek to reduce ageism in a given population by presenting ageism classes that: (1) increase participants' knowledge of physical aging; and (2) increase participants knowledge about myths and misconceptions of aging. An outline of the physical aging section of the class is presented in Table 1. As can be seen from this table, class sessions devoted to physical aging will cover: general statistics about aging and life expectancy information; normal changes in the human body associated with aging (e.g, changes in the cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, visual and hearing, and neurological systems); developmental tasks and problems of the older adults; and major health problems in older people and the nurse roles often associated with these problems. The second section of the class will be devoted to educating nurses about the myths and misconceptions of aging. This section of the class will use methods and techniques developed for use in the ageism education research. In this regard, techniques will be taken from the work of P
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AGING Indicate, Downe-Wamboldt Melanson, People Form, Beall Baumhover, Proposed Innovation, Semantic Differential, Projective Aging, Phasing Innovation, Reno McKenney, Anonymous Al-Anon, physical aging, ageism education, health care, knowledge physical aging, semantic differential, knowledge physical, ageism classes, related nurse, nurse tasks, related nurse tasks, nursing home, positive attitudes, ageism education classes, physical aging questionnaire, table 1 continued,
Approximate Word count = 4852
Approximate Pages = 19 (250 words per page)

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