Picture credit: Kirk Irwin for The New York Times
Picture caption: Kim Burns, right, and colleagues at Westminster Thurber devised a driving route while wearing glasses that blurred their vision.
Link to August 3 New York Times article, "Simulating Age 85, With Lessons on Offering Care".
Excerpts:
As the population in the developing world ages, simulation programs like Xtreme Aging have become a regular part of many nursing or medical school curriculums, and have crept into the corporate world, where knowing what it is like to be elderly increasingly means better understanding one’s customers or even employees — how to design signs or instrument panels, how to make devices more usable.......
Dr. Rosebrook, 55, said she started Xtreme Aging three years ago after a teenage clerk at a hotel joked about her husband being a member of AARP. “We all started sharing experiences and realizing things that we perceived as discrimination,” she said......
To approximate the state of people entering a nursing home, she asked each participant to write down five favorite possessions, five cherished freedoms and three loved ones on Post-it notes. Then one-by-one she asked members of the group to part with a possession, a freedom or a person: a car here, a husband there, freedom of travel next — until all that anyone had left were two possessions.
I wonder if they have a library rate. The article notes that Xtreme Aging's cost is $60 per participant. I suspect there are cheaper alternative out there.
Testimonial from http://www.caring.com/: What I Wish I'd Known, by Peg Gordon (An "aging sensitivity" teacher learned what's wrong with nursing homes when her grandmother was admitted to one.)
Link to ALA Services to Older Adults.
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