Resources for Screening and Biopsychosocial Assessment

Try This: Best Practices in Nursing Care to Older Adults is a series of assessment tools to provide knowledge of best practices in the care of older adults. Includes:

• A general assessment tool (SPICES)
• The Katz Index of Independence in Activities of Daily Living
• The Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale
• Fall Risk Assessment
• Mental Status Assessment of Adults (Mini-Cog)
• The Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) in English or Spanish
• Modified Caregiver Strain Index Alcohol Use Screening and Assessment
• Elder Mistreatment Assessment in English or Spanish

The Try This resources were developed for a nursing curriculum, but they are quite appropriate for social work students and practitioners.

The videos include a demonstration of the instrument, a discussion of the problem, debriefing, and the implications of the assessment for intervention/ treatment planning after the assessment. The assessments are conducted in a hospital setting, so instructors may need to discuss with their students the influence of context on the process of evaluation.

Resources for Health Care Issues and Ethnic Diversity

The Stanford Geriatric Education Center (SGEC) has many valuable resources that can help faculty who need health-related information about older adults. In particular, this center offers excellent on-line training resources on racial and ethnic diversity that include:

• Curriculum in Ethnogeriatrics
  A comprehensive curriculum in the health care of elders from diverse ethnic populations for training in all health care disciplines. It includes five Core Curriculum modules and eleven Ethnic Specific Modules to be used in conjunction with the Core Curriculum.
• Diabetes and Mental Health
  Developed as a resource for teaching culturally appropriate care for depression and cognitive loss for elders at high risk for diabetes
• Improving Communication with Elders of Different Cultures
  Provides information on how to recognize barriers to communication with elders who are culturally or ethnically different from the health care provider, and some culturally sensitive approaches to elicit information and promote shared decision-making and mutual respect.
• Diversity, Healing, and Healthcare
  Contains information about communication and healthcare beliefs related to 15 cultures, 11 religions, and 8 American immigrant cohorts.