Abstract:

This paper develops a health-care career for the elderly through a study of the residents (N = 58) and staff in an old-age home containing both semi-independent apartments and a supervised nursing area. & staff in a church-sponsored old-age home in the Midwest, containing both semi-independent apartments & a supervised nursing area. Negotiations between residents & staff over when to move to the nursing area follow five stages: disguising problems, minimizing problems, denying the implications of problems or their treatments, seeking alternatives to the move, & creating conflict. The conflict between staff & residents arises over their differences in perceptions of the costs & benefits of moving from the semi-independent apartments to the nursing area: residents attribute low medical gains & high social losses to the move; for staff it is just the opposite.