By Jeannine Moreau, RN, PhD
As I wrap up seven years of PhD studies at Sydney University, Australia and take on the title of Doctor in Philosophy I am in the process of another career unfolding. A career I see as following my leaving (also known by some as “retirement”) the UVic School of Nursing. My PhD thesis “Challenging Functional Decline as a driver of care for hospitalized older adults: A discursive ethnography” has proven already, through conference presentations, to be disruptive in health care providers’ thinking about and understanding of how we care for hospitalized older adults.
As important, the thesis and how received has galvanized my own thinking. In particular, thinking about how as a western society we must change not only older adults’ care modalities and technologies but how we perceive older adults as a population of concern. More specifically, changes in how such ideas and technologies are hegemonic, taken- for granted in contemporary health care and respective practices as “just how it is”.
Such insights and new knowledge gained from my thesis work is germane to what I hope will unfold in my next career of publications and research initiatives as I delve further into the socio-economic-political world of older adults’ hospital care. I argue that such initiatives will not only benefit older adults but all of us because if you live long enough “you will be one of them” never mind highly likely in some way “one of those caring for one of them”.
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