Communication Skills for Working with Elders

"Dr. Dreher's book is a concise and highly readable guide to developing and enhancing one's communication skills for the betterment of the elderly person's quality of life... [It] clearly has a place on the bookshelf of every layman and professional alike who interacts with elderly people."
- Gerontology and Geriatrics Education, about the first edition

"...extremely useful as a teaching tool."
- Geriatric Nursing, about the first edition

This popular text provides practical guidelines for effective interaction with the elderly and presents techniques for overcoming common communication problems and disorders common among elders. New to this second edition are chapters addressing assisted living, the use of computers for communication, the "Boomers," and new approaches for dealing with emotional strains of anxiety and depression, among others. Each chapter concludes with exercises and activities designed to help readers practice and hone their skills. This book is ideal for courses in departments of gerontology, social work, nursing, and communication.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Marquis D. Foreman, PhD, RN, FAAN(University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing)
Description:This is a second edition of a book to facilitate health and helping professionals develop positive communication behaviors for working with the elderly.
Purpose:The stated goal of the text is to "overcome the barriers (physical, social, and emotional) of silence often suffered by the elderly, and to enhance the quality of their lives," (p. ix). Although this is a very worthy objective, the book fails to meet the challenge.
Audience:The author writes in the introduction that the book was written to provide practical communication techniques for working with the elderly for both undergraduate students as well as practitioners in the health and helping professions. Despite the target audience, the presentation of materials is too basic and overly simplistic to be helpful.
Features:The book consists of an introduction and 10 chapters; each chapter concludes with exercises and activities "designed to help readers practice and increase their skills in communicating with the elderly," (p. x-xi). These exercises and activities are purported to provide practical techniques and methods to enhance communication with older people; most do not.
Assessment:Practical techniques for improving communication with the elderly are critical for improving the quality of healthcare, and, therefore the lives of older people. However, this book falls short in providing such techniques. For example, on page 49 is a listing of 10 tips for interviewing. Although these tips are useful, they are not specific to the elderly -- they are generic and basic interviewing techniques. Despite chapters describing changes with aging and illness that adversely effect communication, practical techniques specific for improving interviewing with older people are not provided. Moreover, most cases that are derived from real life situations and people have been so generalized as to be gross stereotypes that even the author states, "can mislead because they fail to account for individual differences," (p. 43). The book is very disappointing.

Barbara Bender Dreher, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Communication and former director of the speech and hearing curriculum at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. She holds the Certificate of Clinical Competence from the American Speech, Language and Hearing Association and presents many workshops for professionals in health care and human services. She has served on national and state committees on the communication disorders of adults and was a founding member of the Ohio Research Council on Aging. After acting as a consultant with the Greene County Health Department, she founded the first support group for stroke victims in southern Ohio. While serving as a family caregiver she built an extensive record of professional and semi-professional publications.