Making Gray Gold by Timothy Diamond, Book Review Example

Abstract

The focus of this critique on “Making Gray Gold” by Timothy Diamond looks at the narratives of women in nursing home care. The main thesis and purpose of Diamond’s book s is that nursing home cars are a part of an institution that is bureaucraticculturein which the people that runs the facilities need a touch of interpersonal skills and maternal feelings. As he describes “mother’s wit”, the term encompasses the wide range of practices that places the organization into one unit. Nursing home care is a profession that is caring in nature, and insight and compassion are needed the most in a nursing home environment that is sterile and clean. The author uses this narrative not only to examine the state of quality of care for nursing care, along with the critique of the work of the caregivers and nurses in the nursing home. This book critique, will not only examine the purpose that the author was trying to convey, but also look at the cultural, economic, and political forces that are widely examined in examining the elderly quality of care.

Introduction to the Book

In Timothy Diamond’s Making Gray Gold, he provides a powerful narrative that examines the quality of care of the elderly in nursing homes within the United States. Working as a nurse, he took the minimum wage job where he did the same duties as other caregivers and nurses. The duties that he Diamond did include giving showers, making beds, cleaning up feces, and feeding incapacitated individuals and the elderly. From performing these tasks, Diamond was able to learn about the structural components of the forces and the institutional system that exclude the quality of life that is normal for residents in nursing homes. In the United States alone were over two million elderly individuals’ lives in tens of thousands of nursing homes that is steadily increasing. The author provides a firsthand report on the compelling way in which the policies of the business as usual prices extracts from the aging citizens, as well as those that care for them. The book provides a powerful narrative offers an unnerving account on the nursing home culture, as well as how the elderly are left out of the public policy in which impacts their quality of care.

Book Critique: Making Gray Gold

Within Making Gray Gold, Diamond examines the themes that interrelate to the prices of caring for the elderly population today. Diamond focuses on the women of color that are both overworked and underpaid to increase the profit that businesses obtained. In addition to the numerous losses of individual which occur from caregiving commercialization. Through the observation as a participant, the author first enters into a world that is not normally seen by men that are in an affluent position, such as Caucasian men. In combination with the formal study and direct observation of nursing homes, he analyzes and describes the future, the business, and the reality in the United States of nursing home care. Making Gray Gold identifies with wellbeing in light of the fact that it analyzes physical and mental wellbeing in the connection of a particular environment, the nursing home. In attaining health, an individual must apply some level of determination toward oneself over their prosperity. For example, since the nursing office’s water heating framework has a limited measure of boiling point water accessible, the residents who were the last washed constantly were compelled to wash with cold water. Just the shower itself terrified a couple of the more fragile. In a book that evaluates nursing homes, Diamond hoped to discover accounts that depicts horrible, shameful acts, for example, an office that leaves the residents tied to bunks or wrongfully denies them of their savings.

Rather, Making Gray Gold uncovers the little treacheries and dehumanizing practices that constantly pound away at the elderly residents’ self-sufficiency and respect toward oneself. When they get to be elderly, these individuals are liable to wind up poor without precedent for their lives, and under conditions in which they are generally defenseless. The author’s book portrays a frightening financial process in which even the life savings of the well-to-do elderly are inflexibly sucked dry by the framework. Likewise, the volunteer group members, for example, chapels made consistent visits to the homes to cheer the residents. The normal American will be constrained, due to sick wellbeing or different circumstances, to live in one of the nursing homes Diamond portrays. Besides, the field of the policy for health care is investigated top to bottom. Making Gray Gold is prescribed perusing for any individual in any monetary fragment of American culture.

Diamond first details how he first went to school in 1982 for six months three times a week, in order to obtain his license to work in the state at the nursing home. After searching for jobs for weeks, he went on to work at three different Chicago nursing homes each for four months. (Diamond 5) He became a full participant in the social setting, he gathered his information within a year of doing full time work as a nurse’s assistant. Spending over 10 years in the medical sociology field, he was motivated by the factors in which not much was known about what happens inside nursing homes. He gained most of exploratory methods he followed the feminist theory from Dorothy Smith, in which suggested that he can learn how societies and organizations function, by looking at the everyday ordinary world of work that is performed by women.  He gained his affinity for researching the health care for the elderly as he discusses with Ina and Aileen his co-workers, about how businesses were profiting from nursing home care.

Diamond asks in the very beginning, “What is the process of making gray gold?” (Diamond 5) He went about his observational research by collecting stories and experiences from workers such as Aileen and Ina and decided to be an active participant. The nursing homes that he worked at were situated in widely different parts of Chicago. In one nursing home, residents had to pay for their own care, with the assistance from Medicare. While in the others, they were fully supported by Medicaid. (Diamond 6) Nursing is a profession meant to offer care, and no place is empathy and understanding more required than in the nursing home sterile environment. Diamond explains on his topic by describing his encounters as a nursing colleague in different nursing homes in the United States. The low wages paid nursing colleagues frequently stirred suspicion for the creator when he went on prospective employee meet-ups: “The director where I initially petitioned work comprehended the conflation of these sex, race, and class progress, outlining them with his suspicious inquiry, “Now why would a white fellow need to work for these sorts of wages?” (Diamond 187).

The women that were mostly women of color were paid next to poverty wages, in which the organization had no problems with paying to their workers while narrowing the residents down to the number of beds that the residents use. The residents in the nursing homes were under strict rules, and had little to no control over how they governed their lives. They were placed on strict schedules and that the food they ate was also restricted to certain times. Diamond details in several experiences, where the nursing homes would marginalize the residents by ignoring their individual dignity, values, and interests. They were in certain cases where the residents were able to exert their wills successfully in order to regulate a balance that was precarious between the recognition of their humanism and the sterilizing nature of the system. The residents were able to accomplish this balance through refusal to cooperate and everyday conversation. Other examples in which the nursing homes would strip away their humanism is through their constant reminding of the nursing assistants to style and comb their hair. If the residents did not remind them of this treatment, then the nursing assistants would usually bypass this routine. Even when Diamond interacted with Irene in having to wake her up and dress her, Irene combatted with Diamond in her refusal to be awaken (Diamond 72) Diamond was reminded that she was human by her complaint, and reminded that she still had a choice, or really had autonomy over her decisions. It was with these small acts that Diamond described that he realized through the residents contact and conversations with the nursing assistants, that they were reminded of their humanism.

With such an insignificant level of determination toward oneself, it is basically incomprehensible for nursing home residents to attain wellbeing. Most residents will be sufficiently fortunate to live in homes where humanistic qualities exceed the bureaucratic formality. Then again, once workers move to the United States, and absorb numerous parts of American society and the standardization that is gaining popularity is that of the aging. The subsistence compensation nursing assistants are paid, constrained them to do twofold movements, or two occupations, or always scan for additional work. Making Gray Gold is a plea to the individuals who believed they were on trajectory to retirement that was comfortable living.  Most had children or spouses who went with them frequently. Making Gray Gold is especiallysuggested for individuals in the public arena who for their material belongings were important to them. Case in point, regulations obliges all residents to take morning showers. They institutecompartmentsof weight, strain, fomentation crevices between their requirements for caretaking and the construction in which they emerge” (Diamond 24). A to a great extent disregarded section of the medical services calling is inspected, the discriminating part of the workers. He understood that intensive submersion into setting for the nursing home was obliged to research center living conditions. Case in point, one patient needed a nibble around evening time, yet was denied. A few residents had any expectations of exiting the nursing homes in the wake of finishing their times of improvement. Others had lost all self-governance in regards to their living arrangements for the future. “Every individual sat in a seat, or lay in a bed, or held up, regularly seeming unmoving, regardless moving and being traveled through a social and political process. “(Diamond 74).

Residents were continually moved, or under danger of development, in light of their mental, physical, and money related solidness. Most remote societies are focused around families that are more distant and the they keep the elderly in the nursing homes as long as medicinally possible. The author puts forth a convincing defense for reform in nursing homes. For example, distinctnursing home wards are committed to skilled-care, short-term, and different wards are assigned as private-pay areas and Medicare areas. “As a private industry, nursing homes are embedded in a market, and there is a stratification among homes depending on how much is paid for residency.” (Diamond 55) The nursing assistants are majority female, majority in the authors’ experiences were women of color, and they all come up short on with respect to the obligations they must accept. Then again, notwithstanding the residents’ apprehensions and uneasiness, the showers were compulsory on the grounds that state regulations obliged them. Others needed to grieve for an inhabitant who had died. This was not permitted by the rules. The nursing home patients in Diamond’s case had valuable little of this. They were placed on strict schedules directed from the minute they stirred (or were compelled to stir) until the minute, they were sent to bed. The residents were not permitted to go amiss from the principles actually, when the guidelines did not bode well The majority of the demands that have been mentioned in these cased were not pretentious or unreasonable. Others had essentially outlasted their relatives.

Despite the fact that the author focuses on patients in nursing homes, he gives just as uncovering insight into the predicament of the nursing assistants that gave essential care to the residents. As the instructor for the author advised him, “You need to investigate an understanding’s eye as much as you can, and figure out how to get the signals from that point” (Diamond 17). The principle subject of Making Gray Gold is that there is a bureaucratic structure to nursing homes that could use a solid dose of “mother’s wit.”This concept describes the interpersonal skills and maternal feelings required by individuals who give essential care to the residents: It is not a set of ideals or an abstract idea; it is the extensive variety of practices that clasp the association together” (Diamond 241). Others will have the hardship to live in institutions in which residents do not manage the pride that should accompany maturity. The overall response to this book was intensely enthusiastic. The creator, a male, finished preparing as a nursing assistant and went “covert” while gathering data for this book. The book ultimately deals with illnesses, dying, and death. The medicinal services conveyance system is evaluated, as is one of its main government programs, Medicare. As the members of the organization views its, within looking at the political economy of the nursing homes that is neither inevitable or natural. Diamond believes, “it is a social construction, a product of certain kinds of human labor, authority, and ownership.” (Diamond 216) Millions of individuals who are saving today for retirement do not have an acceptable thought regarding the way of their future years of aging. The destiny of the residents defined by the author is the destiny of everything except the Americans that are the wealthiest.

A sociologist by education and training, the author infrequently uncovered that he was composing and research this book. An alternate upsettingfinding that is made by the author is that the larger part of nursing home residentsarenot, as general society assumes to have relatives that have abandoned them. Individuals that are self-made, generally look down on individuals who get any type of open help. The saddest part is the mistreatment that residents face in the end, which are largely victimized of their life savings, yet the way that the theft occurs legitimately, because the system is so onerous, is little comfort. The resources that were personal to the residents were exhausted within a short time. Additionallyresidents have to be paupers, subordinate forward the entirety to live on open support. For a lot of people, with fragile bones and exceptionally sensitive body thermometers, it was an exertion just to sit underneath or stand in the showers” (Diamond 136). It was ordinary for residents to scream in the showers. Perhaps the most uncovering aspect of Making Gray Gold is the element nature the residency of the nursing home. Most needed to bear the agony of sitting in the care knowing their children or spouse were nearly penniless” (Diamond 59). The book relates to the study of medicinal sociology on numerous levels. The nursing homes that the author invested, the workers were constrained by the designated regulations of the bureaucratic nature of record keeping facilitation, which the comfort of the residents was not always seen as a priority. Diamond throughout his book, provides an accurate and sensitive account of the nursing assistants’ role that is expressed explicitly through the dialogue with residents, instructors, administrative personnel, and other nursing home workers. The format used for narration provides an original and captivating account of the quality of care and the organizational structure of the nursing homes in America. As most of the residents shared, “they continued to speak about their situations, often expressed resistance to the system of rules and ownership that dominated their lives.” (Diamond 57) The sympathetic view used by Diamond in describing the residents and the nursing assistants bears a contrast that is striking to the bureaucrats, administrators, and owners that he criticizes. As the placed constraints from those that enforce the budgetary priorities and government regulations are depicted in the similar manner. While it is not a necessity for Diamond to establish the validity of his identity, in which the nursing home care medical model is both manipulative and mechanical. The residents and the nursing assistants he gives voices to does the job for him.

Conclusion

The author does expose his male bias and naiveté in as he tries to grapple with the nursing home care reality. He offers his perspective from both the residents and the nurses’ assistants by allowing both members of the groups to have their own voice in the narrative. Ultimately, the author examines the manner in which the negative consequence of the motive for profit, and how the nursing homes are funded. In taking the role of the nurse’s assistant, Diamond was in the position that is unique to be filled exclusively by women, women of color primarily. Within this position, he is able to closely look at the conflicts that women of color go through as they tend to the daily and many times intense emotional and physical needs of the white residents. Realizing his own privilege, Diamond, positon, as he compared to the women that he works with, that for economic survival need two jobs or multiple shifts.

Diamond overall provides a clear plea for change in the health-care system in America. The spotlight has been placed on nursing homes and their need to upgrade their triple bottom in the quality of care for the elderly. For organizations such as nursing homes, the business of the graying or the aging has provided millions in profits. This money is earned from the subsidized business in which the government funds through Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security funds that are paid to corporations, who then pay a subpar wage to workers. These workers, or nursing assistants who are largely female, then are forced to take care of patients that are dehumanized by the system in to just being thought of as “beds”. The vocational schools in which he attended failed at preparing the nursing assistants who he considered are “the firing line of health care”, in administering care in the nursing homes. Diamond in his critique, comes off as endorsing the abysmal wages that the workers are compensated, but believes that quality care is needed. He provides solutions, with more input from residents, but he overall contributes to what is wrong with the health care system in the United States, and their treatment for the elderly.

References

Diamond, Timothy. (1992). Making Gray Gold: Narratives of Nursing Home Care. University Chicago Press. Chicago.