Since the elderly are a significant population of health care consumers, health care professionals should be trained to deliver health services to them as effectively and humanely as possible. While the primary tool for delivery of health care services to people is human communication, there is evidence that the communication between the providers…

In devising training programs for gerontological service providers in Pennsylvania, attention was focused on determining to what extent inservice training improved the quality of or skill with which services were ultimately delivered. The Gerontology Manpower Project is recommending a client or consumer-oriented approach, as evidenced by project…

Health communication, gerontology/geriatrics, and the interdisciplinary team approach to health care are considered together in this paper as a critical field for communication research. The first section of the paper offers a definition of interdisciplinary health care teams, then reviews their goals, composition, history and training. The second…

The need for the incorporation of training in geriatrics and gerontology into basic medical and dental education has recently been recognized. Existing studies which attempt to measure the attitudes of medical and dental students toward the aged are extremely limited. As part of a larger study of attitudes and knowledge among 500 health workers,…

There have been several major theories proposed to account for the development of stereotypes of old people. The literature on stereotyping of the elderly is reviewed, with an emphasis on the attitudes of various health workers, especially physicians and psychiatrists. The theories and supporting data of the classical psychoanalytic theory,…