Reviews for Eldercare: A Practical Guide to Clinical Geriatrics

The average rating for Eldercare: A Practical Guide to Clinical Geriatrics based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-07-19 00:00:00 Guy Guy This is a thoroughly enjoyable book; it appears to be the first of two books written by Matthew Syed. He is a champion table tennis player. He combines his own experience in his climb to champion status with the experiences of other champion sportsmen and celebrities, to come to some very interesting conclusions about what allows someone to excel to the top in a field. The secret, if there is one, is that circumstances arise that allow someone to start practicing and developing from a relatively early age. These people are lucky to some extent; the early availability of a superior coach, or a good environment, or an encouraging set of parents or teachers. But that is not all. To become a top player in any field, there is no such thing as inherited talent. It takes very hard work over an extended period of time. There are no child prodigies; there are only children who put in a lot of effort, and guided practice to become the best of the best. The book is very similar to Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success. In fact, Syed pulls a lot of his examples from Gladwell's book. But Syed adds his own personal touch; since he is a sports champion, he is able to add his own background and anecdotes to the book, and a slightly different point of view. Syed discusses what he calls the "talent myth", the idea that some people are just born with a particular aptitude. He totally destroys this myth. Now it is true (for example, see The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance) that certain body types are more suitable for certain sports than others. A short person is less likely to excel in basketball, while he may be better suited for gymnastics. One's genes do, to some extent, determine the sports that one is most likely to excel in. But beyond that, hard work is absolutely essential. Mozart was not a child prodigy because of an innate talent, but he had a father who was an excellent music teacher. Mozart did not create original works of art until he was twenty-one, and had thousands of hours under his belt in playing and composing music. Syed makes an interesting point, that the talent myth is believed by so many, and that as a result it is very damaging to some institutions. These institutions "insist on placing inexperienced individuals--albeit with strong reasoning skills--in positions of power". They do not understand that domain knowledge may be more important than reasoning ability. An example that comes to mind is the military, where officers are rotated from one job to another, even outside of their areas of expertise. They are in effect managers with no expert understanding of the technical field in which they preside. There is an amazing story about Laszlo Polgar, a Hungarian educational psychologist. He was an early advocate of the practice theory of expertise. His central thesis was that areas of expertise can be open to all, and not just to people with special talents. He was not believed, so he devised an experiment with his yet unborn daughters. He would train his children He took care to allow his three daughters to become internally motivated to love the game, and to practice it frequently. Polgar himself was not a good chess player, but he thought that the international rating system would help to objectively quantify the level that his children would ultimately attain. To make a long story short, each of his three daughters became world-class chess players. When people observe youths excelling in some field, they often are biased by the so-called "iceberg illusion": they assume that the youths have special abilities "because they had witnessed only a tiny percentage of the activity that had gone into its making." Onlookers do not see the painfully slow progress made over a period of years, during the training period. To become a world-class achiever in any field, it is not only the sheer number of hours of practice that is important; it is also the type of practice. Syed writes that "world-class performance comes by striving for a target just out of reach, but with a vivid awareness of how the gap might be breached. Over time, through constant repetition and deep concentration, the gap will disappear, only for a new target to be created, just out of reach once again." And he writes that "Excellence is about stepping outside the comfort zone, training with a spirit of endeavor, and accepting the inevitability of trials and tribulations." Syed describes many psychological experiments designed to understand what motivates people to excel. These experiments have been described in many other books, so there is nothing truly new here. But there is one result worth mentioning, even though it is not new; it is better to praise a child's effort than his intelligence or skill. By praising his intelligence, the child will not necessarily be motivated to try his hardest, and may even have the opposite of the intended effect. Lowering standards can help to boost the self-esteem of a student, but can simply lead to poorly-educated students who feel entitled to "easy work and lavish praise". I really enjoyed Syed's description of the difference between a scientist and an athlete. A scientist always is in doubt with a sense of inner skepticism. However, a good athlete should not be in doubt; to an athlete, doubt is poison. I have just touched the surface of the numerous aspects of sports psychology and training that are discussed in this book. This is an excellent, entertaining book that goes in some depth into performance in not only sports, but other fields that require concentration, skills, and training. I highly recommend the book to everyone.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-10-17 00:00:00 Sean Steill Hmm. Judging by the high ratings, some people were surprised to hear that the harder you work at stuff, the better you get. The surprise is that this is a surprise to some people.