Counselling Older Adults

Citation

Williams, S. (2012), "Counselling Older Adults", Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, Vol. 13 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/qaoa.2012.55913baa.011

Counselling Older Adults

Article Type: Book Review From: Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, Volume 13, Issue 2

John Blando, Routledge,New York, NY,Price: 26.95ISBN 978-0-415-99051-6

Counselling Older Adults offers a varied and informative text to guide health professionals in the most appropriate ways of counselling older people.

Blando provides a preface outlining and explaining his rationale for the layout which is insightful and helpful.

The book starts by providing some key foundation theories of aging and later life development, and as a middle age generation adult, I found it useful to understand the views of the older adult in relation to their position (or end stage) of life, and what facts/factors affect their life to require them to seek or require counselling. How cultural influences shape this stage is insightful and useful, although some of the explanations of theories are too compact and do not provide adequate exploration/discussion for the novice to grasps the concepts easily.

The case studies and chapter questions prompts the reader to explore issues further, thus helping to deepen knowledge and understanding, and although in my opinion you would need to be a committed ‘‘student’’ to invest in this activity, I would consider it is well worth the effort. I also felt the further information and notes at the end of each chapter a welcome bonus, and to this end, Blando maintains his audience as there is no need to stray away from the text to immediately investigate other work in a quest for further information. Nevertheless, I would have preferred to see included some possible solutions/outcomes to the case studies, as one is left second guessing if your response is adequate.

The chapters are designed fairly logically, with chapters such as developing skills of communication, and counselling approaches; these are interspersed with more complex and less easy to read (or comprehend) chapters covering such topics as psychodynamic and existential foundations, transference and other counselling processes. I would recommend the reader re-visit these chapters when they feel ready to stretch their learning to another level, getting to grips with these theories at a novice stage may be a bit daunting on a first read, but revisits to these chapters help build knowledge and increase understanding.

Remaining chapters are comprehensive and fairly wide ranging, and provide the reader with a compendium of useful and useable strategies for implementation into their practice. Although as this is an American publication, the majority of its content/material relevant and transferable to UK practice. In fact its supporting literature/research provides a wider perspective of issues, something that is not always provided in many publications.

While the issues explored are wide ranging I would have preferred to see seen some ethical discussion/perspectives explored, as there were many opportunities for these to arise.

Nurses frequently employ counselling skills as part of their role as a nurse, although rarely do they consider themselves counsellors and seldom do they undertake formal education or training in such ‘‘expert’’ skills. Within older people nursing, nurses attempt to address multiple problems but again would they recognise opportunities for counselling older people? These are some of the questions I started this book with and concluded by recognising this book has opened my eyes to situations and opportunities for offering support to members of the ‘‘older’’ generation. Do I have the ability to undertake counselling from reading this book? Probably not, but I have increased my awareness to recognise potential.

As a nurse working in the UK, I am conscious that while this book has and will expand my knowledge and understanding of counselling, I do not think it will equip me the practical skills to utilise in practice as I feel that needs to developed through a recognised qualification. Nevertheless, I feel the book will become a useful reference text for nurses working with older adults.

Sue WilliamsProgramme Manager: MSC/PGDiploma in Nursing (pre-registration), Adult Lecturer, Cardiff School of Nursing & Midwifery, Cardiff, UK.