Continuing education in gerontological nursing

Programs are needed to evaluate staff because more elderly with multiple health-care problems are being hospitalized. Current formal training programs do not always have gerontology content based on up-to-date standards. Stimulation exercises give healthy young and middle-aged health-care workers an idea of challenges confronting the elderly with loss of mobility, vision, hearing, or paralysis. A survey of staff nurses indicated that most had difficulty differentiating physical and psychosocial changes attributed to the normal aging process from pathological manifestation. Awareness of the biological, developmental, and psychosocial theories of aging provide health-care workers a greater understanding of rationale for a specific treatment program.