Processing of Medical information in Aging Patients: Cognitive and Human Factors Perspectives - Tapa blanda

This volume focuses on understanding the impact of age-related decline in cognitive abilities on medical decisions and compliance with medical instructions. It examines how medical information and the medical environment can be restructured to accommodate the decreased cognitive function associated with aging. Although the issues discussed in this book are of critical importance in providing effective health care, they have been largely neglected in the national debate over provision of health care for the increasingly aging population. It is essential that we begin to understand how to present information so that informed choices are made and patients comprehend well enough that they can follow their treatment regimens and understand the importance of those regimens.

Divided into four major sections, this volume addresses the following issues:
* the implications of cognitive aging for medical information processing;
* aging and medical decision making;
* aging and medication adherence; and
* human factors design for medical devices and instructions.

Denise C. Park, PhD, is Professor of Psychology and Senior Research Scientist at the University of Michigan. She is Director of the Center for Applied Cognitive Research on Aging, which is funded by the National Institute on Aging. Dr. Park received her PhD in 1977 at the State University of New York at Albany. She came to the University of Michigan in 1995 from the University of Georgia, where she was Professor of Psychology and Director of the Applied Cognitive Aging Center. She is past president of the Division of Adult Development and Aging of the American Psychological Association, past chair of the NIH Mental Disorders of Aging Study Section, and recently finished a term in the APA Council of Representatives, where she was secretary of the Women's Caucus. She was Chair of the Board of Scientific Affairs of the APA from 1999-2000 and is Associate Editor of "The American Psychologist."

Dr. Park directs a large and active research program at the University of Michigan, funded primarily by multiple grants from the National Institute on Aging. Her work is highly collaborative as she works with faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from Psychology, the Medical School and the Alcohol Research Center. Her research interests include: memory and aging, functional neuroimaging of aging and memory, cognition in medical settings and aging, cognition aging and culture, social cognition and aging, fibromyalgia and memory function, and alcoholism, aging and memory.