Nuove relazioni e immagine dell'anziano nel processo di assistenza informale

Nuove relazioni e immagine dell'anziano nel processo di assistenza informaleThis paper aims to investigate the image of old person in healthcare professionals for the elderly, with regard to implementing suitable relationship and welfare patterns. For this purpose, a sample of 21 foreign healthcare workers for the elderly, attending both formation and professional qualification courses, were administered with the Twenty Statements Test (TST) (Khun et al., 1954) to evaluate their Self image. Then they were administered again with the TST but they were asked to fill it as if they were just the old person they have to care. The data were collected through a specific code (adjusted from Belloni Sonzogni et al., 1994) for both such a self-representations. A significant link between the Self image of the healthcare workers for the elderly and that related to the old person was found. First, both self-image of healthcare workers for the elderly and old personrelated image were caracterized above all by self-descriptions concerning Private Self but not to Public Self. Second, self-descriptions of healthcare professionals for the elderly mostly regardered positive traits of personality; on the contrary, those related to old people were focused above all on negative physical and existential topics. Furthermore, healthcare workers for the elderly, trying to identify with old people, tended to assign them, on the whole, the own selfcentered image. The implications of these outcomes in order to promoting a perspective of empowerment of elderly image by the light of the complex relationship among old person, healthcare worker for the elderly and familiar caregiver were discussed.

Amelia Belloni Sonzogni, Andrea Calcaterra, Nuove relazioni e immagine dell'anziano nel processo di assistenza informale in "RICERCHE DI PSICOLOGIA " 1-2/2008, pp 181-207, DOI: