Good Death Views: Patients, Relatives, Healthcare Providers (Research, Video 1:40)

Improving quality of life should be an ongoing goal, even as death approaches. While many embrace thoughts of having a good death, what exactly do they mean at personal levels? What do patients, relatives, general practitioners, and other healthcare providers mean when they speak of dying in a good way when recovery is no longer available? The following research on a good death explains their responses.

Research participants were asked how important patients, close relatives, and healthcare providers considered 11 core themes in defining a good death. Specific questionnaires were used for each group and distributed in the working area of a palliative care network with the cooperation of five local quality groups, two nursing homes, and two groups of home care nurses. Data were analyzed. The following results were reported:

     1. All groups believed a pain-free death was most significant.

     2. General practitioners, nurses, patients, and close relatives valued the       following themes: support of family, respect for patient as an individual, being able to say goodbye, and euthanasia in case of unbearable suffering.

     3. Major differences between general practitioners and nurses deserve      attention because patients and family members expect that healthcare providers will work together as a team.

What about you and your own personal expectations of a good death beyond being pain-free? In this video, several people share their opinions on what a good death means to them:

Frances Shani Parker, Author
Becoming Dead Right: A Hospice Volunteer in Urban Nursing Homes is available in paperback and e-book editions in America and other countries at online and offline booksellers.
Hospice and Nursing Homes Blog

Mardi Gras Celebration with Older Adult Seniors (Video 3:36)

Mardi Gras celebrations are common in older adult communities around the world. It's a great time for fantasy, dancing, food and fun! Through the years, I have had the good fortune of witnessing entertaining Mardi Gras merriment enhancing quality of life. I store all my Mardi Gras memories in a marvelous, mental, treasure chest painted with purple, green and gold brush strokes, the official colors of Mardi Gras. I always smile when I look inside. No doubt, amused older adults will be smiling this Mardi Gras 2020 and many Mardi Gras seasons to come.

Older adults celebrating this world-famous Carnival season often have numerous parades, balls, and parties starting on January 6th. In many places, parades are held during the day and at night until the biggest celebration on Mardi Gras day. Mardi Gras day, known also as “Fat Tuesday,” falls on the day before the Christian season of Lent starts. It can fall on any Tuesday between February 3rd and March 9th. These are upcoming Mardi Gras dates:

February 25, 2020
February 16, 2021
March 1, 2022
February 21, 2023
February 13, 2024
March 4, 2025
February 17, 2026
February 9, 2027

Featured on my blog this year in the video below is “Dancing with the Seniors Mardi Gras Edition” presented by Nexion Health affiliates, New Iberia Manor South, Village Creek Rehabilitation Nursing Center, and Reliant Rehabilitation. Join them in a wonderful Mardi Gras celebration. The party has already started!

Frances Shani Parker, Author
Becoming Dead Right: A Hospice Volunteer in Urban Nursing Homes is available in paperback and e-book editions in America and other countries at online and offline booksellers.

Hospice and Nursing Homes Blog

Friendships, Stereotypes (Older Adult Research, Video 1:51)

Children as young as three years old have already started internalizing negative stereotypes about aging. A quick review of media portrayals of older adults and comments from people about them are great teachers for young impressionable minds. A greater problem, however, is that too many of the negative stereotypes young people internalize can stay with them throughout their own aging and unconsciously become embedded in their own lifestyles.

A common stereotype about aging is the portrayal of older adults as being lonely with little social support. Can expectations about aging impact friendships? Research focused on the relationship between positive aging expectations and later life friendships was done to explore these connections. This study examined questionnaire data from the Baltimore Experience Corps Trial, a randomized volunteer intervention for adults aged 60 years and older. Associations between expectations about aging and different types of social support were tested with these results:

1) Participants with more positive expectations at baseline increased their number of friends two years later and had greater overall perceived support availability twelve months later.

2) Only participants with at least average perceived support availability at baseline showed an association between expectations and later support availability.

These results are the first to link overall positive expectations regarding aging to the social domain. They confirm that overall expectations regarding aging can impact older adults, not only physically and cognitively, but also socially.

Shouldn’t we all just affirm our own healthy aging by promoting positive images about ourselves? Shouldn’t we just live our best lives and not limit ourselves based on our age numbers? Meet Millie and Evelyn who met at the retirement home where they live and quickly became best friends. In this video, they talk about the importance of friendships as they age.

You can view research performed by Detroit public school fourth graders on older adult stereotypes here. Their research was presented locally and nationally.

Frances Shani Parker, Author
Becoming Dead Right: A Hospice Volunteer in Urban Nursing Homes is available in paperback and e-book editions in America and other countries at online and offline booksellers.

Hospice and Nursing Homes Blog

Rosa Parks and the Omen Poem by Frances Shani Parker

      

A former Detroit Public Schools administrator at Rosa Parks Middle School in Michigan, I was fortunate to have spent time with Rosa Parks when she visited our school.

Rosa Parks and the Omen
By Frances Shani Parker

Greatness arrived when Rosa Parks
visited her namesake school.
I hung up her coat, knelt to remove
snow-covered boots from feet
that had walked, marched, scattered
footprints over racial injustice.
We laughed at our similar names
when she mistakenly signed her photo
“To Frances Parks,” not Frances Parker.
I felt an omen of kinship between us.

Her arrest for remaining in a bus seat
designated by law for white people
gave rise to the civil rights movement.
Years later, my own Detroit arrest
forced the opening of district centers
for students left after school hours.
When colleagues called me Rosa Parks,
my heart warmed with cherished
memories of a historic woman’s photo
with an omen of kinship that came true.

Passage of time brings slow endings.
I still encounter white privilege practices,
judgment through negative stereotypes,
ongoing news of systemic racial bias
in this divided country many call great.
But I remember proudly a warrior woman
who defended our human dignity
on a Montgomery, Alabama bus.
I honor her commitment, her courage,
her kinship with America’s oppressed.

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (1913–2005) became an American pioneer of the civil rights movement when she was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama. After decades of mass protests, bus segregation and related injustices were ruled unconstitutional. Rosa Parks received the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

Frances Shani Parker, Author
Becoming Dead Right: A Hospice Volunteer in Urban Nursing Homes is available in paperback and e-book editions in America and other countries at online and offline booksellers.
Hospice and Nursing Homes Blog